Phonics
How we teach phonics at Broomwood primary school
At Broomwood primary school each child's phonics journey begins in the early years foundation stage. Starting in preschool and nursery we support early listening and sound discrimination skills through play with sound, stories, music and rhyme. Children learn a variety of skills, including tuning into environmental sounds, exploring alliteration, singing and playing with rhyme, making sound patterns and orally segmenting and blending words. Time is set aside daily for activities, which they love and we want to grow their interest in reading from the very start!
At Broomwood we prioritise reading and phonics to develop the skills and independence to love reading. We have chosen to follow the 'Read Write Inc' phonics scheme.
Read write inc, is a highly successful phonics programme that teaches children to develop reading fluency and comprehension, spell with confidence and learn to articulate their ideas and understanding. It is a complete literacy programme for children from 4 to 7 years old, with additional programmes for children with SEND in older year groups.
How phonics is taught through read write inc
Children are grouped based on ability from reception to year 2 and are taught daily phonics sessions in the afternoon. We assess children every half term in order to regroup when necessary and ensure that children are being challenged and meeting their full learning potential. Children who require Read Write Inc in key stage 2 continue with groups and receive 1.1 tutoring tailored for their need. Our staff team are fully committed to reading and are passionate to enable every child to read confidently and with enjoyment.
Our teachers follow the read write inc scheme carefully and each session follows a familiar structure which children enjoy and are eager to participate in.
In the summer term of nursery children begin Read write Inc, nursery programme, introducing the sounds, with a focus on pronunciation, they learn these skills alongside continuing to develop oral segmenting and blending which is when we separate words into sounds and put them back together again which we refer to as 'Fred talk'. For example b-a-g is bag.
In reception children begin phonic lessons learning single letter sounds straight away. We teach children how to say (phoneme) and read the grapheme (written version), then write it. Read Write Inc use picture prompts to support children's memory and understanding of each sound for example 'a' for 'apple'. Once children recognise sets of sounds, we begin to build words with magnetic letters, before moving onto reading 'green' decodable words.
Beginning with a speed sounds session, children learn new sounds, depending on their stage and then practise reading words, recapping sounds by reading 'green' decodable words and developing reading fluency. They are introduced to 'red' words which are 'tricky' as they are phonetically irregular and cannot be sounded out using standard phonic rules. We then complete shared reading, which comprises of 20 minutes a day. Children are given a book based on their reading ability, they read one book each week. To support learning at home, children are given texts to read that match their ability and the book they are reading in their group.
Please explore the pages to find out more about Read Write inc and how you can support your child at home.
Further information on phonics and early reading can be found in the Reading folder.
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