Curriculum - Phonics 

We teach the key skills of English (as a spoken language, read and written) discretely in literacy and in context through our carefully planned topic work . Our aim is to inspire children to read and write independently, skillfully and with pleasure.

At Woodlands Infant and Nursery School phonics learning begins in Nursery where children are regularly exposed to Nursery rhymes and songs, joining in and beginning to identify the patterns of rhyme and alliteration. They play listening games, both musical and environmental, to develop the children’s listening and attention skills as well as games that involve identifying and saying the different sounds they hear in words. As children become more confident they begin to notice and discuss written print and letters in their environment taking opportunities to talk about graphemes/letter sounds they may recognise such as the letters of their name.

When children have developed these early skills they begin to follow the Read Write Inc programme. This is a programme of short daily phonics sessions for 4 to 7 year-olds learning to read and write. Children learn the English alphabetic code with clear progression throughout the programme; first learning one way to read the 40+ sounds and blend these sounds into words, then learning to read the same sounds with alternative graphemes. The children write every day, rehearsing out loud what they want to say, before spelling the words using the graphemes they know. By the end of year 1 children are accurate and speedy readers and are ready to move off the Ruth Miskin phonics programme.

The Government strongly recommend the use of synthetic phonics when teaching early literacy skills to children. Synthetic phonics is simply the ability to convert a letter or letter group into sounds that are then blended together into a word.

Here at the Woodlands Infant and Nursery School, we are using the Read Write Inc (RWI) programme to get children off to a flying start with their English. RWI is a method of learning based upon letter sounds and phonics, and we use it to aid children in their reading and writing.

Reading opens the door to learning. A child who reads a lot will become a good reader. A good reader will be able to read more challenging material. A child who can read more challenging material is a child who will learn. The more a child learns, the more he or she will want to find out.

The children are assessed regularly and grouped according to their ability. They will work with a RWI trained teacher or teaching assistant.

RWI implementation at Woodlands

The systematic teaching of phonics is a high priority as a Nursery and Infant school

• Phonics is taught from the spring term in Nursery for those pupils ready to access this.
• All learners in Reception and KS1 (on the phonics programme) have daily phonics sessions using the ‘Read Write Inc’ systematic synthetic phonics programme.
• Read Write Inc. is a method of learning letter sounds and blending them together to read and write words.
• Teachers draw upon observations and continuous assessment to ensure learners are stretched and challenged and to identify those who may need additional support.
• Learners work through the different stages, learning and developing their phonics sounds and knowledge.
• Specific phonics intervention such as Fast track tutoring or fluency intervention are put in place for those pupils that need support.
• For those that do not pass the phonics screening additional support and intervention is put in place ready for them to resit this in Year 2.
• We recognise that systematic, high quality phonics teaching is essential but additional skills and opportunities are needed for pupil to achieve the goal of being a well-rounded reader, namely fluency and comprehension.

Reading books

Books shared with children are age-appropriate and matched to the level of the class/individual.

• Learners working on R W Inc. programme have home reading books matched to their current phonics level. They will have read these in school but take this home to support reading fluency.
• In additional to their RWI book that they have read in class they also take home a matching Book Bag book. This has sounds that they are familiar with and ensures they are consolidating the skills taught in their RWI lesson.
• The final book sent home is a reading for pleasure book. It is a text the children have selected sometimes beyond their reading ability so that they can listen to rich stories at home. 
• Once children are off the R W Inc. programme and can read automatically and effortlessly and new words speedily, they move onto age-appropriate books for their year group. Teachers have carefully selected texts for each year group in school. At this point they will still continue to take home two books their age appropriate book and their reading for pleasure book.

What a Read Write Inc session looks like.

Reading

When using RWI to read the children will:

• Learn 44 sounds and the corresponding letter/letter groups using simple prompts
• Learn to read words using sound blending (Fred talk)
• Read lively stories featuring words they have learnt to sound out
• Show that they comprehend the stories by answering 'Find It' and 'Prove It'

Writing

When using RWI to write the children will:

• Learn to write the letter/letter groups which represent the 44 sounds
• Learn to write words by saying the sounds and graphemes (Fred fingers)

Talking

When using RWI the children will also work in pairs:

• To answer questions
• To take turns talking and listening to each other
• To give positive praise to each other

The Phonics Screening Check

The National Phonics Screening Check is performed in June of Year 1. The purpose of the screening check is to confirm that all children have learned phonic decoding to an age-appropriate standard. The children who did not meet the required standard for the check in year 1 enter again in year 2 with additional support.