At Co-op Academy Hillside, we believe all of our children can become fluent readers and writers. We teach reading through Read Write Inc (RWI) Phonics, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme to give your child the best possible start with their Literacy development. We start teaching phonics in Nursery and follow a carefully structured progression of skills, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.  

As a result, our children are able to tackle any unfamiliar words as they read. At Co-op Academy Hillside, we also model the application of phonics through phonics in shared reading and writing, both inside and outside of the phonics lesson and across the curriculum.

Understanding Phonics

“If a child memorises ten words, the child can read only ten words, but if a child learns the sounds of ten letters, the child will be able to read 350 three sound words, 4,320 four sound words and 21,650 five sound words.”

Martin Kozloff, 2002

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 Co-op Academy Hillside, we begin to expose children in Nursery to skills that will help them access the programme. We continue teaching RWI to children beyond the age of 7 to ensure individual pupil needs are met.

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.

RWI was developed by Ruth Miskin and more information on this can be found at ruthmiskin.com

Key Features of the Read Write inc programme

Reading   The children:

• Learn 44 sounds and the corresponding letters/letter groups using simple picture prompts – see below
• Learn to read words using Fred talk and sound blending
• Read from a range of storybooks and non-fiction books matched to their phonic knowledge
• Work well with partners
• Develop comprehension skills in stories by answering ‘Find It’ and ‘Prove It’ discussion questions

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:

• Work in pairs so that they:
• Answer every question
• Practise activities with their partner
• Take turns in talking and reading to each other
• Develop ambitious vocabulary

Foundations for Phonics in Nursery

We start by ensuring the children are ready for the teaching of phonics in the earliest stages of Nursery.  The phonics curriculum begins in Nursery with children’s early phonemic awareness being explicitly developed through the skills of:

Tuning into sounds – to develop children’s listening skills and awareness

Listening and remembering sounds – hearing the difference

Talking about Sounds – describing, developing vocabulary & language comprehension

Skills are developed through the aspects of environmental sounds, instrumental sounds, body percussion, rhythm and rhyme, alliteration, voice sounds and oral segmenting & blending.

The children then begin the Read Write Inc phonics scheme in FS1, learning their set 1 sounds through a daily focused phonics lesson. Pupils are immersed in a directed teaching approach which embeds systematic phonics skills as the core skills for reading. Sounds are taught in a specific order, and regular assessment informs future planning and interventions. First, pupils will learn to read Set 1 Speed Sounds: these are sounds written with one letter: m a s d t i n p g o c k u b f e l h r j v y w z x.  These are taught with rhymes and pictures to help the children to remember in a fun and engaging way:

There is a continued strong focus on oral / aural blending and segmenting linked to beginning to read simple VC and CVC words with the known graphemes taught and how those sounds can be written down. This is essential for reading, but it also helps children learn to spell well. 

Read Write Inc Progression of Skills

Progressing through the stages

As children progress through the programme, they begin to work on complex sounds and read books appropriate to their reading level in our Guided Reading which forms part of our daily ‘Reading Rocks’ sessions. Daily sessions of RWI phonics last 20 minutes. Once children become fluent speedy readers they will move on to the RWI Spelling programme.

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:

Set 2 Speed Sounds
Sound	Phrase	Words to practice reading and spelling
ay	ay: may I play	play, day, may, way, say, spray
ee	ee: what can you see	see, three, been, green, seen, sleep
igh	igh: fly high	high, night, light, fright, bright, might
ow	ow: blow the snow	blow, snow, low, show, know, slow
oo	oo: poo at the zoo	too, zoo, food, pool, moon, spoon
oo	oo: look at a book	took, look, book, shook, cook, foot
ar	ar: start the car	car, start, part, star, hard, sharp
or	or: shut the door	sort, short, horse, sport, fork, snort
air	air: that’s not fair	fair, stair, hair, air, chair, lair
ir	ir: whirl and twirl	girl, bird, third, whirl, twirl, dirt
ou	ou: shout it out	out, shout, loud, mouth, round, found
oy	oy: toy for a boy	toy, boy, enjoy

Set 3 Speed Sounds
Sound	Phrase	Words to practice reading and spelling
ea	Cup of tea	clean, dream, seat, scream, real
oi	Spoil the boy	join, voice, coin
a-e	Make a cake	make, cake, name, same, late, date
i-e	Nice smile	smile, white, nice, like, time, hide
o-e	Phone home	home, hope, spoke, note, broke, phone
u-e	Huge brute	tune, rude, huge, brute, use, June
aw	Yawn at dawn	saw, las, dawn, crawl, paw, yawn
are	Care and share	share, dare, scare, square, bare
ur	Nurse with a purse	burn, turn, spurt, nurse, purse, hurt
er	A better letter	never, better, weather, after, proper, corner
ow	Brown cow	how, down, brown, cow, town, now
ai	Snail in the rain	snail, paid, tail, train, paint, rain
oa	Goat in a boat	goat, boat, road, throat, toast, coat
ew	Chew the stew	chew, new, blew, flew, drew, grew
ire	Fire! Fire!	Fire, hire, wire, bon/fire, in/spire, con/spire
ear	Hear with your ear	hear, dear, fear, near, year, ear
ure	Sure it’s pure	pure, sure, cure, pic/ture, mix/ture, ad/ven/ture

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.  These words provide endless opportunities for children to apply and practice their thinking in a range of different contexts.  

To help at home:

Your child will start to bring books home relating to their reading stage. You will find they will bring home a phonics-based book, this will aid application, speed and fluency- developing speedy reading!  

• Parent video: How to say the sounds at home
• Parent video: Sound blending
• Parent video: Reading digraphs
• Parent Video: Reading ‘bouncy sounds’

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.

• https://www.ruthmiskin.com/en/find-out-more/parents/ – Information and resources to support phonics learning at home
• https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/zgkw2hv – fun games for the children to play
• http://www.ictgames.com/literacy.html  – fun games for the children to play
• http://www.firstschoolyears.com/  – fun games for the children to play
• BBC Bitesize – many games to play covering all areas of the curriculum

Read Write Inc guide for parents 

The following links provides lots of free Read Write Inc. Phonics resources to help your child, including eBooks, practice sheets and parent films. 

• Read Write Inc. guide for parents