Phonics
Phonics at Foxhills
At Foxhills every member of staff holds the firm belief that every child can and will learn to read, regardless of their background, needs and abilities.
All staff have high aspirations for every child in becoming a reader. We believe that reading underpins the curriculum and therefore, pupils who do not learn to speak read and write confidently and fluently do not have the language skills required in order to fully participate as a member of society, and are therefore disenfranchised.
Through our phonics programme ‘Read, Write, Inc.’ all children receive daily phonics teaching in a small group environment that specifically targets their individual needs. Our teachers and teaching assistants are skilled practitioners who receive regular training to ensure that all children experience high quality phonics teaching all of the time.
Read, Write, Inc.
Read, Write, Inc. provides a consistent, robust, systematic approach to phonics teaching throughout the school. This approach has proven to be highly successful for children at Foxhills and the well-established scheme is closely matched to children’s individual needs, helping our committed staff achieve a high level of success.
The English lead regularly monitors teaching and learning, in addition to assessing every child’s progress at least once every six weeks. Assessment is used throughout the programme to quickly identify the needs of all children, so that specific, targeted intervention can take place, within a timely manner.
The impact of Read, Write, Inc. at Foxhills is that our children develop into confident, resilient learners who want to learn, are passionate about their own progress and become accurate, fluent readers, who are able to take advantage of opportunities provided to them across the wider curriculum and in the wider world.
Set 1 Sounds
Can you help Fred revisit the Set 1 sounds?
Set 2 Sounds
Fred learns to read the Set 2 sounds - Can you help Fred recognise the special friends?
Set 3 Sounds
Continue to practise reading and recognising the special friends to help Fred read the Set 3 sounds.
Blending to Read
Fred needs your help! Fred knows his pure sounds... can you help him blend these to read?
Wordless Lilac Books
Whilst learning their initial set 1 sounds, before the children have learned to blend, our teachers give children wordless books so that they can begin to develop other aspects of early reading. The children are taught to discuss characters, build upon their vocabulary and develop confidence when retelling stories.
RWI Ditty Sheets
Once children can blend accurately to read simple words containing single letter set 1 sounds they begin learning to read ditties. In this video one of our teachers is modelling how to use the ditty sheets to support children at this stage of reading development. This child is using one of the later ditty sheets, because she already has an understanding of some of the set 1 special friends.
RWI Red Book
Once the children know every set 1 sound (including special friends) and are growing in confidence with blending to read simple words and ditties, they move to Red Read, Write Inc. (RWI) group. In this video one of our teachers is modelling how to support a child who is reading Red RWI books. This child has now learned how to read some red words 'of' and 'put'. 'Red' words (sometimes called common exception words) are words that are difficult to decode using the GPCs (grapheme-phoneme correspondence) the child has learned so far. We say, "It's hard to F-r-e-d a red!"
RWI Green Book
As children progress to green and purple Read, Write Inc. (RWI) groups they begin to learn to recognise the set 2 sounds, while practising reading stories containing the set 1 sounds they already know. At this stage, the children are encouraged to use F-r-e-d in their head. They also learn further 'red' words. In this video one of our teachers is modelling how to support a child who is reading green RWI books.