Across our Trust at Hibaldstow and Scawby Academy; we follow Ruth Miskin's "Read, Write, Inc" scheme.  This is a sequential and systematic teaching programme for helping children to read and write using synthetic phonics and learning pure sounds.  In the parent section, there are videos to help introduce some of the aspects of the way we teach phonics and how you can support your child at home.

Pupils bring home "Book Bag Book" that are matched to their phonic levels to practise, reinforce and underpin their phonic knowledge.  Pupils are assessed regularly to monitor progress towards the expected standard and identify gaps that can be addressed through intervention and support. 

There are some words that cannot be read phonetically, these are called red words and consist of non-decodable words that the children will learn to read by sight through regular repetition and revision of the words.

Children will be taught the ‘set 1’ sounds initially. These are accompanied by a handwriting rhyme which help them form the letters to write them.  Then progression onto further sets that focus on reading vowel graphemes.

After they complete the RWI phonics programme, usually during Year 2, the pupils move onto the RWI spelling scheme to help learn how to use suffixes and prefixes to amend root words; this runs and builds on prior learning from Year 2 to the end of Year 6.   Some pupils continue to access phonics teaching beyond this where they need further consolidation and practise.

Through the spelling scheme pupils consolidate the principles of the phonics through blending and segmenting with this programme using techniques such as dots and dashes to segment words. It is still important that pupils continue to practise these phonic skills through reading regularly beyond the RWI scheme.  They also learn about homophones and irregular spelling patterns through the spelling scheme.

Please click the header image or this link to visit our dedicated phonics minisite.  This contains lots of additional information and videos about how we teach phonics and ways you can support your child at home.

Please Note- This is a restricted school site so you will need to sign in with your child's Google Account for access- this is the same account they use for the school system and Google Classroom.

Additional Information from RWI can be found here

https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/reading-schemes-oxford-levels/read-write-inc-phonics-guide/

Key Components of RWI

Fred Talk

At school we use a puppet called Fred who only speaks in sounds. We call this Fred Talk. For example, Fred would say d-o-g, we would say dog. Your child is taught to hear sounds and blend them together to say words.

As your child learns each sound (phoneme), they are also taught to blend the sounds together to say and read CVC words such as mat, sit, pin.

Fred Fingers

Fred Fingers are used for spelling. Your child is taught to sound out the word they are spelling and put up the correct number of fingers for the sounds they can hear in the word. For example: m-e-t = 3 sounds = 3 fingers. 

Green Words

When your child can orally blend sounds to say words, your child will start to read ‘green’ words.  ‘Green’ words are words which can be sounded out and blended.

Red Words

When children start to read short ditties, your child will be taught to read ‘red’ words. These words are words with ‘tricky letters’ which can’t be sounded out phonetically.  Your child will be taught the red words in a specific order, which will correlate with the books they are reading in lessons.