At Cottesmore Academy, we use Read Write Inc Phonics to provide your children with the best start with their literacy whilst developing a love of reading and writing. 

 

Read Write Inc. Phonics is a programme that uses systematic phonics to teach all children to read. We begin teaching phonics as soon as possible when the children join us in EYFS and this then continues until the children are ready to come off the programme. We begin by teaching the sounds in a specific order, it is key to remember to use the pure sounds to enable the children to be successful when blending the sounds into words. We then teach the children to blend the sounds together in order to read words, the children are encouraged to use the dots and dashes to support them with their Fred talking before blending the sounds to read the word. The children will then read words in the Storybooks that are carefully matched to the sounds that they can already read - setting them up for success! We also read linked texts to the children, exposing them to different vocabulary that links to what they will be reading, but may not necessarily appear in their Storybook for the week. 

 

Within the programme, we not only teach the children to read words using Fred talk, we also teach them how to spell words using our Fred fingers. We encourage the children to show the number of sounds on their non-dominant hand and pinch the sounds that they hear within the words they are spelling before writing them down.

 

Phonics makes learning to read easier for children because we start by teaching them just one way of reading and writing every sound as shown below on the Simple Speed Sounds chart. We teach the Set 1 sounds first and then the Set 2 sounds (the shaded sounds ay - oy)

 

We also use the Complex Speed Sounds chart in Phonics lessons to show the most common graphemes for each sounds. Each box is a sound box showing different ways to read and write each of the sounds.