Phonics
At Sacred Heart, we are passionate about ensuring all children become confident and enthusiastic readers and writers. All pupils Sacred Heart who require phonic teaching receive a daily phonics lesson using the Read Write Inc phonics programme. The children are split into small groups, according to ability, and progress through the scheme until they are proficient at recognising and blending sounds and reading words fluently.
By teaching our children the core skills of segmenting and blending, we hope to start them on their ‘reading journey’ with as much support and enthusiasm as possible. We believe that Read, Write, Inc (RWI) phonics provides the foundations of learning, to make the development into fluent reading and writing easier - ready for the National Phonics Screening Check in Year 1.
All children read with an adult in school at least once a week. Children who are identified as needing extra support with their reading will be read with three times a week.
RWI was developed by Ruth Miskin, and more information on this can be found at:
https://www.ruthmiskin.com/en/find-out-more/parents/
What is Phonics?
Phonics is a way of teaching children to read quickly and fluently.
Children are taught how to:
- recognise the sounds that each individual letter makes.
- identify the sounds that different combinations of letters make – such as ‘oo’.
- blend these sounds together from left to right to make a word.
The aim of this page is to give you a clear picture of how we approach the teaching of phonics and word recognition and how, as a parent or carer, you can support and encourage your child at home. For guidance on how to support your child at home, please visit the Helping Your Child to Read at Home link.
Here are some of the technical vocabulary explained.
Blend(ing) - to draw individual sounds together to pronounce a word, e.g. s-n-a-p
Grapheme - Written representation of the sounds
Phoneme - Smallest unit of speech sounds sh-i-p
Segment(ing) - to split up a word into its individual phonemes in order to spell it.
Suffix(es) - a unit of letters such as 'ed' 'ing' that are added to a word to change its meaning e.g. play'ed'
Read Write Inc. Glossary
Fred Talk - sounding out the word before reading (blending)
Sound blending – putting sounds together to make a word, e.g. c–a–t cat
Fred in your head – blending in your head, then saying the word out loud
Special friends – sounds written with more than one letter, e.g. sh, ng, qu, ch
Speed Sounds – the individual sounds that make up words
What are Speed Sounds, Set 1, Set 2 and Set 3?
Set 1 Speed Sounds: m a s d t i n p g o c k u b f e l h r j v y w z x and sh th ch qu ng nk ck
Set 2 Speed Sounds: ay ee igh ow oo oo ar or air ir ou oy
Set 3 Speed Sounds: ea oi a-e i-e o-e u-e aw are ur er ow ai oa ew ire ear ure
See the links below to access our Speed Sounds mats: