Phonics
At Reculver we teach a synthetic phonics programme called ‘Read, Write Inc’.
‘Effective teachers are highly trained to instill the principles of phonics, can identify the learning needs of young children, and recognise and overcome the barriers that impede learning.’ HMI Ofsted report on ‘Reading by Six’
This programme has been tried and tested over the years and has been a great success in our school.
All of us will have been in the learn to read phase at some time in our lives. The quicker we learn to read, the quicker we can start to read to learn – this phase lasts for the rest of lives. Read, Write Inc helps support children in being a successful reader at Reculver School.
Read Write Inc. lasts two years for most children; they begin in the Early Years and continue through to the end of Year 1. There are some children who spend longer on the programme. Adults leading the group meet weekly to discuss and evaluate individual children’s progress and group the children to meet their learning needs.
Children will bring home decodable books that match the phonics they know. This will be the RWInc book that they have been using to support their reading in school and the children will keep this for the week as it runs alongside their RWInc lessons. In addition to this, there will be other books from our reading scheme that will be sent home which also contain all of the sounds that they have been taught and these will be changed regularly.
They follow the programme learning the sounds in the simple code (set 1) and then leading onto the more complex code (sets 2 and 3).
Set 1:
Set 2:
Set 3:
Fred (frog) helps children learn to read
Fred can only talk in sounds...
(Fred can only say c_a_t, he can’t say cat)
We call this Fred Talk! We only use pure sounds which help children to blend. The Ruth Miskin Website has lots of support to help you to do his at home with your child.
The programme is not just about reading but is linked with writing too. The children learn new sounds within fantastic decodable books and use the sounds learnt to help them with their spellings when writing independent sentences. They are also given the opportunity to edit sentences to make them correct. This gives our children the confidence to read and write with confidence in a fun and exciting way!
![]() |
![]() |