The Teaching of Phonics at Southwood Primary School
Our approach to teaching phonics across EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage) and KS1 (Key Stage 1) is based on the Read Write Inc. (RWi) phonics programme. This is a method of learning centred around learning phonics and letter sounds as a way to aid the children when learning to read and write.

Using RWi, the children learn to read effortlessly so that they can put all of their energy into comprehending what they read. It also forms the basis of them learning to spell effortlessly so that they can concentrate on composing what they write.

The RWi programme is a systematic approach to phonics which relies on repetitive teaching to allow children to learn, embed and apply skills of learning sounds, blending sounds to read real and non-sense words and then moving on to reading with fluency, accuracy and at speed. As well as this, children focus on understanding the text, looking at characters and begin to infer meaning from a text.

Using RWi to teach reading teaches children:

• The 44 sounds and corresponding letter / letter groups using simple picture prompts.
• To read words using Fred Talk (breaking down words into sounds).
• To read lively stories featuring words that they have learnt to sound out.
• To comprehend the stories by answering ‘find it’ (retrieval) and ‘prove it’ (inference) questions.

Using RWi to teach writing teaches children:

• To learn to write the letters / groups of letters which represent the 44 sounds.
• To learn to write words by saying the sounds in Fred Talk.
• To write simple sentences.

During the writing aspect of the lesson, children learn to compose simple sentences using new vocabulary, the correct punctuation and then progresses onto supporting children to compose longer and more detailed writing which covers a range of genres.