Reading / Phonics

Read Write Inc. (RWI)is the programme we use at Mossfield School to teach phonics (early reading) to our children. It is a highly successful scheme published by Oxford University Press. It has been fully validated and approved for use in UK schools by the Department for Education. 

Read Write Inc is used by over a quarter of the UK’s primary schools. It is a comprehensive literacy programme, weaving decoding, comprehension, writing and spelling together seamlessly. We believe it gives your child the best possible start with their literacy development. Rigorous assessment and tracking ensure progress for all.

RWI is mainly designed for children aged 4-7, however we begin to expose the children in our Nursery Class to skills that will help them access the taught programme in our Reception Class. We continue teaching the programme to children until they are secure with the scheme, as we use a stage, not age, approach. This means that we expect children to master each stage, before moving onto the next one, regardless of which age group they are in.

Through the Read Write Inc programme children are taught to recognise sounds and then to “sound-blend” them into words for reading.

We begin our systematic approach in our Reception Class with daily sessions as a class and then in groups. The children are regularly assessed and continue to follow the programme into Key Stage 1 (Infants).

Children learn the sounds, which get more complex as they go on. They use the sounds to build and segment words to develop their reading and writing skills. Alongside this, they are taught words which cannot be blended (RWI 'red words') such as 'said' and 'was'.

Reading books are linked to the RWI stages so that children are

reading books which are matched to their ability.

Your child will start to bring books home as they become confident readers, relating to their reading stage. The book will be a phonics based book, to support application, speed and fluency.

Please encourage your child to sound out the words, talk to them about the vocabulary and praise their effort.

You can also support the learning of the sounds with your child. We use pure sounds ( ‘m’ not ‘muh’, ‘s’ not ‘suh’, etc.) so that your child will be able to blend the sounds into words more easily.

Please view the video below for a guide to the Set 1-3 sounds and their pronunciation.