Early Reading

At Harris Primary Academy Crystal Palace we aim for all our children to become fluent, confident readers who are passionate about reading.

Children who read regularly or are read to regularly have the opportunity to open the doors to so many different worlds! More importantly, reading will give your child the tools to become independent life-long learners.

We can achieve this together through:

• Read Write Inc, a program to help to your child read at school
• Encouraging children to develop a love of books by reading to them daily, at home and at school
• Giving children access to a wide range of books at school and at home

At Harris Primary Academy Crystal Palace we use Read Write Inc. Phonics (RWI) to give your child the best possible start with their reading and writing. We have put together a guide to how the RWI programme works together with some useful links. Miss Cummins and Miss Alleyne are our Read Write Inc. leaders, so if you have questions about the teaching of phonics, please contact school who can refer you to them. Please take the time to read the information as it will provide invaluable information as to how you can help and support your child in reading.

What is Read Write Inc.?
Read Write Inc. (RWI) is a phonics complete literacy programme which helps all children learn to read fluently and at speed so they can focus on developing their skills in comprehension, vocabulary and spelling. The programme is designed for children aged 4-7. However, at HPACP we begin the programme in Nursery and will continue teaching RWI to children beyond the age of 7 if they still need support in their reading.

RWI was developed by Ruth Miskin and more information on this can be found here.

How will RWI be taught?
All children are assessed half termly by our RWI lead teachers so they work with small groups of children at the same level. This allows complete participation in lessons.

Nursery
When appropriate, children will be introduced to the initial sounds in short five minutes sessions. Towards the end of the academic year, the children will begin to blend sounds together to read words, if ready.

Reception
In Reception all children will learn how to ‘read’ the sounds in words and how those sounds can be written down. Reception children are taught in very small groups to ensure that the teaching of phonics has a large impact to their early learning.

Writing

The children:

• learn to write and form the letters/letter groups which represent the 44 sounds with the help of fun phrases
• learn to write words by using Fred Talk
• learn to build sentences by practising sentences out loud before they write 

Talking

The children

• They work in pairs so that they:
• answer every question
• practise every activity with their partner
• take turns in talking and reading to each other
• develop ambitious vocabulary

Year One & Year Two
hildren follow the same format as Reception but will work on complex sounds and read books appropriate to their reading level. Daily sessions of RWI phonics last for forty minutes.  Once children become fluent speedy readers they will move on to literacy and language sessions or comprehension sessions.

 

Five key principles underpin the teaching in all Read Write Inc. sessions:  

• Purpose – know the purpose of every activity and share it with the children, so they know the one thing they
  should be thinking about.
• Participation – ensure every child participates throughout the lesson. Partnership work is fundamental to learning.
• Praise – ensure children are praised for effort and learning, not ability.
• Pace – teach at an effective pace and devote every moment to teaching and learning.
• Passion – be passionate about teaching so children can be engaged emotionally.

 

Children will be taught how to read as follows:
Before you start to teach your child, practise saying the sounds below. These are the sounds we use to speak in English.

Fred Talk
We use pure sounds (‘m’ not’ muh’,’s’ not ‘suh’, etc.) so that your child will be able to blend the sounds into words more easily.

At school we use a puppet called Fred who is an expert on sounding out words! We call it, ‘Fred Talk’. E.g. m-o-p, c-a-t, m-a-n, sh-o-p, b-l-a-ck.

The following video is an example of blending sounds with Fred. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEzfpod5w_Q

The children are taught the sounds in 3 sets.

Step 1:

Set 1 Sounds are taught in the following order together with rhymes to help children form the letters correctly and instantly recognise sounds ready for blending.

Set 1

 

Please do not use letter names at this early stage.
Click here to hear how to pronounce sounds correctly.

Children will also use pictures for each sound to help recognise the sound and then form the shape of the sound.

 

Step 2:

The children are then taught Set 2 Sounds - the long vowels. When they are very confident with all of set 1 and 2 they are taught Set 3 Sounds.

Nonsense words (Alien words)          

As well as learning to read and blend real words children will have plenty of opportunities to apply their sound recognition skills on reading ‘Nonsense words’. These words will also feature heavily in the Year One Phonics Screening check in the summer term.
 

Step 3:

Children will be introduced to ‘Ditty books’ when they successfully begin to read single words. The short vowels should be kept short and sharp:

Children use sound-blending (Fred Talk) to read short ditties. They will bring these home once they have read and discussed the book in class. Children will then be challenged to use their developing phonic knowledge to write short sentences.

Within all the books children will have red and green words to learn to help them to become speedy readers. Red words are words that are not easily decodable and challenge words to extend children’s vocabulary. Green words are linked to the sounds they have been learning and are easily decodable.

       

Dots and dashes represent the sound each letter makes.

Once your child has been introduced and taught these words in school we will send them home for you to continue practising with your child.

During the RWI session children will read the book three times and at each new reading they will have plenty of opportunities to practise using their developing comprehension skills. You may have heard your child talking about ‘hold, edit or build a sentence’.

Hold a sentence is an activity that encourages children to remember a whole sentence while focusing on spelling and punctuation.

Build a sentence is to give children the opportunity to create their own sentence to that shows the meaning of a word and edit a sentence allows the children to critique a sentence using their knowledge of spelling punctuation and grammar. Children complete a longer piece of independent writing, which gives them the opportunity to show off their creativity and to practice their spelling, grammar and punctuation.

 

Phonics Screening Check Year One

What is the Year 1 phonics screening check?
The Year 1 phonics screening check is a short, light-touch assessment to confirm whether individual pupils have learnt phonic decoding to an appropriate standard.

It will identify the children who need extra help so they are given support by their school to improve their reading skills. They will then be able to retake the check so that schools can track pupils until they are able to decode.

 

 

Useful websites for Parents

Please find a list of websites that you may find useful in helping you and your child  learn about phonics. Games and fun activity websites are also included.

Phonics Play - many games to play

ICT Games  - fun games for the children to play

Star Fall  - fun games for the children to play

First School Years  - fun games for the children to play

Oxford Owl - help your child learn