Redwood Primary School –Teaching of Phonics

Children at Redwood follow the Read, Write Inc. scheme for teaching phonics. This sits alongside the use of quality fiction and non-fiction texts that are used to teach literacy. 

In our nursery, children will learn  how to discriminate between sounds. They will learn about sounds in the environment, instrumental sounds and how to make sounds with different body parts. They will also learn about rhythm and rhyme, alliteration and how to make sounds with our voices. All of these activities will lead to children being competent in oral blending and segmenting. 

The activities learnt in nursery will continue in reception as well as the children beginning to learn sounds within the first half term of starting school. They are introduced to ‘Fred Frog’ who makes learning sounds fun for them.  As they begin to build up their knowledge of sounds, children blend and read simple words.  This then enables them to begin to read a wide range of stories and non-fiction texts matched to their phonic ability. 

As children progress with learning new sounds, they move on to harder texts. In years 1 and 2 children are grouped according to their phonic ability.  They focus upon learning new sounds to read and spell.

At the end of year 1, children take a phonics screening check which establishes their ability to read and blend sounds to make words.  Children who do not pass the phonics screening check in year one are given the opportunity to retake it in year 2. Children who are confident with phonics will move on to the No-Nonsense spelling programme in year 2.

In Key Stage 2, children who still need to embed their phonic understanding  receive daily intervention matched to their phonic need. We also use the 'Nessy' programme to support this.