At St Gregory's we follow the RWI phonics programme

"Teach a child to read and keep that child reading and you will change everything. And I mean everything.”

Jeanette Winterson

RWI is a complete systematic synthetic phonics programme with high quality training, assessment, intervention, and resources (including decodable books). Staff are trained in the RWI approach and we provide ongoing training and support for staff through practice sessions and coaching. We carry out daily intervention to support pupils to ‘keep up’ with the programme. Children’s early independent reading is exclusively reading the RWI fully decodable books, ensuring that children are only asked to read books with sounds that they know.

The Ruth Miskin Training has lots of helpful videos for parents to watch to help them to understand the programme and how it works. Here are a few of them:

How it works

The children are assessed and grouped according to their ability.

They work in small groups with a teacher and a teaching assistant.

At the end of each half term the children will be assessed again to check they have made progress and will be grouped again.

In addition to the Read Write Inc programme the children will also be working on writing skills and storytelling in their classes with their own class teacher.

Reading

Using Read Write Inc the children learn to read effortlessly so that they can put all their energy into understanding what they read.

When using 'Read Write Inc' to read the children will:

• Learn 44 sounds and the corresponding letter/letter groups using simple picture prompts.

• Learn to read words by blending the sounds together.

• Read lively stories featuring words they have learnt to sound out.

• Show that they understand the stories by answering 'Find It' and 'Prove it' discussion questions.

Writing

Read Write Inc allows the children to spell effortlessly so that they can put their energy into working out what they want to write.

When using 'Read Write Inc' to write the children will:

• Learn to write the letters/letter groups which represent the 44 sounds (graphemes).

• Learn to write words by sounding them out and then writing the corresponding graphemes.

• Learn to write simple and then increasingly complex sentences.

• Compose a range of texts using discussion prompts.

• Compose stories based on picture strips.

Talking

When using 'Read Write Inc' the children work in pairs to:

• Answer questions to practise every activity.

• Take turns talking to each other.

• Give positive praise to each other.

Blending

Children learn to read words by blending the letter-sounds that are in the Speed Sound sets (shown further down the page).

Help your child learn to read words by sound-blending e.g. c-a-t = cat.

Help children to say the pure sounds, as quickly as they can, and then to blend the sounds together to say the whole word.

What else can I do to help my child read?

Read a variety of books to your child (fiction, non-fiction, rhymes etc). 

Discuss the different features of various books.

Talk about the books and other reading materials that you have shared.

Explain the meaning of new words. 

Most importantly though, show the fun that can be gained by listening to stories and reading a range of texts. E.g. reading and then following a recipe together.

Don't forget reading cereal packets, shopping lists, road signs, web pages, magazines, newspapers etc are also useful ways to practise reading.