Intent of Phonics

At Knowle, we are passionate about not only making every child a reader but also to love to read too.

We understand and believe that phonics is an effective way to teach children to read. 

We follow a systematic phonics programme, Read Write Inc. We complete the programme with all children. Once the children have completed Read Write Inc., their phonics journey continues throughout the school as phonics is embedded within all whole class reading and writing lessons. We know that reading is at the heart of all areas of learning, and we want all of our children to have the skills and confidence to be successful throughout their school careers and in life - that is why you will find stories and high-quality texts at the heart of our curriculum. 

What is the purpose of phonics?

• To teach children aural discrimination, phonemic awareness and rhyme awareness to support the application of reading and writing.
• To encourage repetition and consolidation, so that decoding and the skills of segmenting and blending are automatic and aid reading fluidity. 
• To learn to read and write all 44 graphemes in the English language.
• To learn to read all 75 phonemes within the RWInc. programme. 
• To learn specific strategies to help them remember common exception words.
• To learn to read and write words through blending and segmenting in the initial stages of teaching.
• To apply their phonic knowledge across all curriculum areas.

Implementation of Phonics

Children who are completing RWInc. are grouped according to their RWInc. knowledge (based on baseline and six subsequent assessment points throughout the year). Responsive movement takes place when group leaders identify if a child needs to move. Analysis of the data by the English lead ensures groups are reviewed regularly and intervention is provided. Groups are led by trained members of staff who also receive weekly practice sessions, coaching and monitoring. The Read Write Inc. programme has detailed lesson plans and each group has specific plans which cater for their developing needs. Children working below the expected level have Fast Track Tutoring, which is completed 1:1, 1:2 or in small groups, to ensure all children 'keep up' and do not have to 'catch up'.  

Why Read Write Inc?
Many schools use different phonics schemes to teach children to read. However, at Knowle, we believe Read Write Inc Phonics is the best scheme to support your child with their early reading, as we feel it gives all children a flying start, due to its consistency and tight, specific lesson plans as well as the RWInc teaching techniques. Additionally, Read Write Inc. Phonics matches the requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework and the National Curriculum for Reading, Writing and Spelling.

Planning:

The school follows a systematic phonics programme, which is Read Write Inc. All phonics planning and teaching have been adapted to meet the requirements of the Statutory Framework of EYFS (2021) and the National Curriculum in order to provide a robust, consistent and high-quality level of provision. 

Lessons:

Discrete phonics lessons take place daily across Reception, Year 1 and Year 2. RWInc. continues for children in KS2 if they require it.

Classes:

Children are taught in small groups of children. They are grouped according to their phonic knowledge, which is assessed using RWInc assessments every six weeks. Formative assessment is ongoing to take into account the rate at which children progress - this allows us to be responsive to their progress and put them in the most appropriate reading group. 

Resources:

All groups have a range of resources to use which are appropriate for the level at which the children are working. All classes have speed sound cards, Fred frog,  simple or complex speed sound charts and much more to support the use of phonics throughout the school.

Speed Sounds:
When teaching your child phonics, we will use the term 'speed sounds'. These are individual or groups of sounds which your child will learn how to read quickly and effortlessly as they progress through Reception, Year 1, Year 2 and beyond. Your child will be regularly assessed to ensure they are reaching their full potential and will receive additional support if required. 

Phoneme:
A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a language. In English, there are 44 phonemes. Your child will learn a new sound every day, accompanied by a handwriting rhyme which helps them to remember how to form the letter shape when writing it. For example, if your child was learning the phoneme (sound) ‘a’, they would also learn the rhyme ’round the apple and down the leaf’ for when they write the letter. 

Speed Sound Sets: 

These are the sounds that children learn and are taught in three stages. 

 Set 1 Sounds 

Below are the Set 1 sounds. They are taught in the following order: 

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    

sh  th   ch   qu   ng   nk   ck 

 

Set 2 Speed Sounds 

Below are the Set 2 sounds. They are taught in the following order: 

ay  ee   igh  ow   oo   oo   ar   or   air   ir   ou   oy 

At this point, your child will learn three new speed sounds every week, whilst revisiting previously taught sounds. Your child will continue to read ‘green words’ with these sounds in, for example ‘play’ and ‘sight’. They will also be taught how to read longer words with these sounds in, for example ‘saying’ and ‘midnight’. By the end of Reception, your child should be able to read all the Set 1 sounds and the first six Set 2 sounds quickly and confidently.  

 

Set 3 Speed Sounds 

Below are the Set 3 sounds. They are taught in the following order: 

ea  oi   a-e   i-e   o-e   u-e   aw   are   ur   er  ow   ai   oa   ew   ire   ear  ure  tion   

tious/cious   au   e-e   ue   ie   ph   wh   kn   e 

Set 3 sounds are taught in the same way as Set 2 sounds. It is expected that your child will be secure with all the Set 1, Set 2 and Set 3 sounds by the end of Year 1.  

Phonics: How to pronounce pure sounds | Oxford Owl

Learn how to pronounce all 44 phonemes used in the English language with these helpful examples from Suzy Ditchburn and her daughter.

Blending

Alongside teaching children sounds, we teach them to blend sounds to read words e.g. s-a-t, sat.

We use Fred Talk to help children read. This is Fred:

Fred can only speak in sounds. He says d-o-g, h-a-t etc.

Speaking like Fred helps children to understand that words are made up of sounds.

Fred helps children practise blending sounds together because he needs the children to say the words for him. Fred says d-o-g, children tell him the word is dog.

Phonics: How to blend sounds to read words | Oxford Owl

Suzy Ditchburn explains how letter sounds can be blended to read words, and gives tips on how to practise phonics with your child.

Green words 

Once your child is able to blend, they will begin to use their blending skills to read. We start by using the speed sound cards to build words using individual letters. We then match the speech sound cards with the green word cards. Eventually, we transition to reading Green words. Green words are words that can be sounded out and blended together, e.g. 'dog', 'top', 'chip' and 'crash'. 

Sound buttons and dashes 

Sound buttons are the dots and dashes that can sometimes be seen under the words to support the reading. Your child will be taught to say the sounds aloud as they press the sound buttons. The dashes indicate more than one letter making one sound. These are diagraphs such as 'sh' and trigraphs such as 'are' and 'igh'. Diagraphs and trigraphs are known in phonics as special friends. We sweep instead of press the dashes when reading so children remember it is one sound.

Red words 

Red words are phonetically irregular words. Put simply, unlike the green words, red words when sounded out phonetically will not make the word you are reading. Your child will be taught strategies when reading red words so that when reading harder words in the future, they have the skills to decode words they are not familiar with. Your child will be taught which letter is making the red word tricky to read, as the letter that is not making its usual sound will be circled. Learning that the 'e' in 'the' for example, is the tricky grapheme in the word, as it is not following the phonics rules. We can add these tricky graphemes to our speed sound charts in lessons so that the children can remember them too.

RWI Story Books

Children read a range of core books appropriate to their reading level in their phonics group sessions. The Core Storybooks follow the sound teaching sequence to ensure children are able to decode the books they are given and that they experience success. The children use 'cycle of instruction' so that after 'direct instruction' (I do), guided practice (we do) they can consolidate what they have been learning with partner practice (you do). Where they will take turns to 'teach' another pupil. This allows the children to make their understanding clear to themselves as well as allow the teacher to address misconceptions. Additionally, the children read the storybooks three times in school, before they are also sent home for sufficient practice. We read each book in school three times for a specific reason: once for decoding, once for comprehension and once for fluency. This is to ensure our children become confident, fluent readers who love to read.

 

For further practice of the same graphemes but more variety in reading choice, the Book Bag Books storybooks are also sent home.

 

Extra Support at Home:

Learning to read at home - Ruth Miskin Literacy

 

 

The Phonics Screening Check: 

This is a short assessment completed for children in Year 1 to assess their reading ability. Here is an explanation of it below: