'The four Read Write Inc. programmes provide a cohesive and creative approach to teaching children to read and write.'

Ruth Miskin - Read Write Inc.

Children experience phonics teaching on a daily basis in Year 1. This allows adults to personalise learning for the children and promote accelerated learning. Phonics is taught through the Read Write Inc. Scheme, please see the video below for more information.

The National Phonics Screening Test is the week commencing Monday 10 June 2024 - please do not book a holiday during this time!

In phonics lessons children are taught four main things:

GPCs: This stands for grapheme phoneme correspondences. This simply means that they are taught all the phonemes in the English language and ways of writing them down. These sounds are taught in a particular order.

Blending: Children are taught to be able to blend. This is when children say the sounds that make up a word and are able to merge the sounds together until they can hear what the word is. This skill is vital in learning to read.

Segmenting: Children are also taught to segment. This is the opposite of blending. Children are able to say a word and then break it up into the phonemes that make it up. This skill is vital in being able to spell words.

Using and applying: Children are taught to put these phonics skills into action so that they are not learnt in isolation. This is done in a variety of ways. Often, children are dictated a short sentence that contains the key phonemes and tricky words that have been taught. Sometimes, children play word soup and are encouraged to create their own sentences. We discuss the type of sentence that has been written and always use the correct punctuation - especially for question sentences! 

Common exception words: 

Sometimes called red words, key words or tricky words, common exception words are rebels. They don’t quite follow the spelling or phonics rules that children are taught in years 1 and 2. Almost as soon as your child starts to read they will come across them and they are expected to be able to spell them correctly in their writing. 

Please see the table below which shows the order in which we will teach spellings and common exception words, so you can support your child at home.