Phonics

Please click on the buttons below to access information about phonics at Great Meols.

Phonics Teaching

As a school we have adopted the Read Write Inc phonics programme, which is a focused, direct and systematic phonics programme. Phonics is a way of teaching children how to read and write by developing their phonemic awareness—the ability to hear, identify and manipulate different sounds used in the English language. Children learn the correspondence between these sounds and the spelling patterns (graphemes) that represent them. At Great Meols, we place a strong emphasis on the teaching of phonics in the early years of reading and writing in order to give all children a solid foundation for learning.

Our phonic sessions are short, engaging and memorable with an emphasis placed on revising a previously learned letter-sound correspondence, learning a new one, practicing this, and applying it to sentence level work. Within our Read Write Inc programme, the children begin to learn each letter sound through the use of a catchy rhyme and corresponding letter formation. i.e. ‘m’ which is taught through the rhyme ‘Maisie, mountain, mountain’. This teaches the children the accurate formation of the letter sound and pronunciation.

The programme is introduced in FS1 and continues throughout FS2, Year 1 and Year 2. This approach is continued in KS2 as an intervention for those children still needing phonics support.

Reading Books

Our RWI reading books connect closely to the phonics knowledge pupils are taught when they are learning to read. Our sequence of reading books show a cumulative progression in phonics knowledge.

In order for our pupils to have sufficient practice in reading and re-reading books that match the grapheme-phoneme correspondences they know, children in Reception, Year 1 and, where appropriate in Year 2, will take home a Read Write Inc story book. Children read from these books, which contain the sounds they know, while they are learning to read.

Our children will have read this storybook several times throughout the week to develop their accuracy, fluency and comprehension. Children will read it at home for them to share and celebrate their success with reading it. Our children are assessed regularly to ensure that the Read Write Inc book and reading scheme book is appropriately matched.

Please click on the button below to access a recording of the parent / carers information session held on Zoom.