Spelling, Reading & Phonics

Phonics Scheme – Nursery to Year 1

At Oakridge Primary School, we use Read Write Inc, developed by Ruth Miskin.  This is a DfE validated systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) teaching programme.  This provides a structured and systematic approach to teaching phonics.  This has been proven to be a highly effective way to teach children to read and write at an early age.  The 44 sounds and corresponding letters are introduced and taught systematically.  Children learn to blend sounds to read words.  Then they use short ‘ditties’ to practise early reading and writing before being taught more letter-sound correspondences.  When reading a word, children recognise the letters (phonemes) and blend together the respective sounds; when writing a word they identify the sounds and write down the corresponding letters (graphemes).  Children then begin to read a series of levelled decodable texts, both fiction and nonfiction.  Research shows that the progress made by children using this type of approach far exceeds that of children not taught using a synthetic phonics approach.

Please click here to view the RWI phonics website.

And click here for the training website.

 

 

Year 2 to Year 6

From Year 2 onwards, we use the Read, Write, Inc spelling scheme. It is a comprehensive programme made up of 15 minute daily lessons which reflects the spelling requirements of the 2014 National Curriculum. The sessions are based on interactive learning where Aliens from an exciting online spelling planet introduce spelling rules and concepts. It uses many of the familiar key teaching strategies, and builds upon activities used in Read Write Inc. Phonics, to maintain progress and help children develop confident spelling. It primarily develops children’s knowledge of word families, how suffixes impact upon root words, and provides mnemonics to remember the trickiest spellings.

The teaching revolves around instruction, partner and group practice, and competitive group challenges that help children commit new words to memory.

Alongside this programme the children will also have personalised spellings to learn. To allow children to practise spellings at home, children will be set online ‘spelling shed’ assignments.  This starts during Reception, at the point that children are able to read the words.