Early Reading

Teaching Early Reading

At Burnt Ash, we have adapted the Read, Write, Inc. program to support our delivery of phonics. Phonics is a way of teaching children how to read and write. It helps children hear, identify and use different sounds that distinguish one word from another in the English language. Written language can be compared to a code, so knowing the sounds of individual letters and how those letters sound when they’re combined will help children decode words as they read. We want reading to be at the heart of our curriculum so instilling these skills early is important for our children. In Read, Write, Inc, children experience success from the very beginning. Lively and engaging phonic books are closely matched to their increasing knowledge of phonics and ‘tricky’ words and, as children re-read the stories, their fluency and confidence increases. These books are the sent home with the children weekly so they children can experience success at reading in front of parents and carers. 

What will it look like?

An hour session starting off with a whole class teaching approach teaching a sound and then into RWI groups to focus on storybook reading. Each room that teaches RWI will have a blue chart set up to support consistency in groups. RWI has 5 sessions a week Monday – Friday.

In whole class teaching, the class will learn 2 sounds a week. The first day of RWI they will learn a new sound the second day revise. The third day introduce a new sound 4^th day revise. Early morning work will revise the sounds learnt and revisit the gaps. By having early morning work linked to RWI will consolidate what the children have learnt in that week or previous weeks.

When you are teaching RWI continue to establish routines and practise signals in everyday teaching such as 1,2,3, stop,  MTYT, TTYP. Use signals consistently for everyday teaching and in the classroom/school environment.

RWI Class input

• The class input will be for 15-20 minutes
• All sessions will start with the class input.
• The teacher will go through the sounds learnt so far and introduce the new sound.
• The children will learn how to say the sound, read the sound and write the sound.
• The new sound will then be added to the sound pack to be reviewed.
• Children will learn to read and identify special friends, fred talk and read the word of the new sounds.
• 6 words in a review pack will also be used – first starting with special friends, fred talk and read the word – fred in the head – speedy reading

Assessment

• Assessment is every half term (6 weeks) to see children’s successes and what their gaps are moving forward. The assessments are carried out by 3 assessors who moderate between them in each assessment window.
• Children to be assessed using the RWI phonic assessment 1, 2 or 3. The sheet needs to be folded or covered so children can experience a high success rate as they read new sounds. If children are unable to read the first 2 sounds/words of a new group the assessment is stopped and the children’s reading is praised.
• Assessment data is then used for best fit groupings within the year group/key stage.
• After an assessment teachers need to fill in the class progress data grid and analyse which children need support or an intervention and what this might look like in class. To gain an oversight of a year group teachers will also fill in their year group over view to see how they can support RWI in the provision.

In the Continuous Provision

• Display new sound of the week poster
• Display words of the week linked to the sound
• QR codes linked to ruth miskin for children to access in continuous provision – reading or writing.
• When the children are in their continuous provision exploring and enquiring. Develop the teaching of reading so the children have access to the sounds they have learnt or books they have read to consolidate their learning.
• RWI books to be present in reading area
• Green words and sound cards to be in the writing/phonics area
• Fred talk games to be available with children not yet blending
• Children to explore experiences when learning sounds in set 1 - 3 for example when learning phoneme ar encourage the children to make a car.
• Adults to have flash card sounds available to target children in short burst revision (pinny time)
• Make use of adults for small focus group activities – this maybe supporting a group of children on their pre teaching of a new phoneme or extending children on their comprehension.

Early Morning Work / Carousel

Early morning work/carousel will revise the sounds learnt and revisit the gaps. By having early morning work linked to RWI will consolidate what the children have learnt in that week or previous weeks.

• Early morning work will focus on revising sounds taught the previous week to support retention.
• Activities may include recapping sounds, reading words containing the sound or linked writing opportunities, phonics games such as snakes and ladders, kaboom, iPads used to link to ruth miskin QR codes, buried treasure
• Encouraging reading books from RWI in the book areas so children can share what they have read in class.