“The most important starting point is to read to children. Reading to children is the best way of encouraging them to love books and reading. When you love a book, your children will want to hear it again and again! Children thrive on repetition, so when you’ve read Room on the Broom for the hundredth time, remember you are hardwiring their brains for success. Read–a–lot–children do well at school; they read in two days what many children read in a year. They absorb the vocabulary, grammar, ideas and, above all, knowledge.
(Ruth Miskin, 2020)
Intent Statement
At St Gabriel’s, we follow the systematic synthetic phonics programme, ‘Read Write Inc.’. Phonics is taught on a daily basis throughout the EYFS and KS1 and targeted interventions are delivered using Read Write Inc. in KS2.
We are committed to every child learning to read as quickly as possible with the strongest start to reading in the Foundation Stage. We follow Ruth Miskin’s ‘Read Write Inc Phonics’ programme daily and follow the programme rigorously. We use this highly successful programme to teach our children to read, write and spell. Our children do well in the phonics screening check and by Year 2, the majority are fluent readers with the best chance of success as they move into the Juniors. Read Write Inc sessions take place every morning for all Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 children, although in Year 2, on completion of the programme, children will gradually transition to a teaching approach based on real books, still utilising Read Write Inc skills. The pace and consistency of the programme is a key element to developing reading skills for all children.
Our ultimate aims and objectives within the Read Write Inc. programme are for the children to be able to learn and apply sound blending skills and to learn to segment words in order to be able to create skilled and confident readers. Children also learn to read and spell words that do not conform to regular phonetic patterns (High Frequency Words) and decode both fiction and non–fiction texts through discussion, performance and teacher led activities.
To reinforce their learning, children are then given accurately matched, fully decodable Read Write Inc ‘Book Bag Books’ that allow the children to apply their phonic knowledge and practice reading at home with their parents. This means that the books contain only the sounds in which the children have already been taught so far and leaves nothing for the children to ‘guess’ when reading (which can often lead to errors). It is therefore important for the children to experience success when reading these books and they must be celebrated for reading these fluently at home. Allow them to show off their reading ability to you and share the joy of reading together!
Intended Impact
During the children’s learning journey at St Gabriel’s, our intended impact of the Read Write Inc Phonics curriculum, is to ensure that children:
- read easily, fluently and with good understanding
- develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
- acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language
- appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage
- use discussion in order to learn
