Early Reading and Phonics

Reading and phonics

Learning to read is the most important thing your child will learn at our school. Everything else depends on it, so we put as much energy as we possibly can into making sure that every single child learns to read as quickly as possible.

What is phonics?

Phonics is the method of teaching reading through the identification of sounds and graphemes. All words are made up of individual sounds and these sounds are blended together to form words. A grapheme is another name for the letters we use to write the sounds - the spelling of that sound on the page. The National Curriculum requires that all children are taught phonics systematically through a program, giving children to tools to read and write any word. At The Greville, the program we have chosen is Read Write Inc. This scheme has been validated by the Department for Education and follows current best practice on the teaching of phonics and reading and educational research about the way that children learn best.

Early reading

Under Read Write Inc, the children are taught a new sound each day. They practise using this sound to read both real and alien words, and to use it in their writing. They read books with this sound in, and revisit it frequently so that it is kept in their long term memory.

The children are assessed each half term, and then placed into groups depending on what they need to learn next. Thanks to our fantastic teaching assistants, we are able to cover a wide range of groups. Each reading teacher is highly trained to deliver the sessions, and Read Write Inc has a culture of constant training and practise so that the teaching standard remains high.

For more information about Read Write Inc, please visit: https://www.ruthmiskin.com/parents/ 

Resources to support parents at home with phonics:

Word Lists

Red Words:

Red words are sometimes known as ‘common exception words’ or ‘tricky’ words. These are words that children will need to learn on sight because they contain parts that are not decodable. For example the word 'the' could be decoded as 'theh', but children must learn the correct pronunciation and spelling. Some of the red words are only tricky until a specific sound is learnt or because people pronounce them differently in different parts of the country.

Green words

 'Green' words are phonetically decodable words that the children learn to read. They allow children to become fluent readers because regular reading of these words mean that they become familiar and are able to recognise/read them on sight. They can then use their knowledge of these words to read similar words more quickly.

Glossary and Greville Guide for Parents

Powerpoint from most recent parent workshop

This table shows the progress children may make as they progress through the RWI phonics programme and the order in which the colour book bands progress.

Ruth Miskin's Read Write Inc. website for parents

Oxford Owl

Lots of printable and video resources to support parents to understand the RWI phonics scheme and how to support children at home.