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.

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