At Badgerbrook, we use the Read, Write Inc approach to teach reading, writing, and phonics in Foundation Stage, Year 1 and into Year 2.  We combine this with other reading and writing opportunities to suit all pupils.

Following this approach, pupils are taught in ability groups, thus enabling them to be taught according to their reading level, not their age. Teaching is very precise and tailored to the needs of each child irrespective of year group.

In September 2021, we purchased the Read, Write, Inc book bag books for children to take home. We have received lots of positive comments about these books from both parents and children. These books are matched to the ability of each individual reader and only contain sounds that the children have learnt in their Read, Write, Inc group. This means the children are more able to read the text independently, using the skills they have learnt, therefore increasing reading fluency and confidence.

We try our best to give parents up to date information about how we teach phonics and reading at our school. In the autumn term we hold parents meeting for both Foundation Stage and Year 1 about the teaching of phonics and reading. Information from this meeting is sent to parents so the messages given are consistent.

Further to these meetings, we have added some links to some documents that may be useful to you.

These documents have been collated from different sources to summarise the information we think will be most useful about using the Read, Write, Inc programme to help you to support your child at home.

• Phonics at home
• Read write booklet : useful information regarding how your child is being taught phonics and reading and the terms that are used in the classroom so that you can use the same vocabulary when reading with your child.
• Phonics in red and green words : this document is a useful list of words the children learn. You can see how the green words get progressively harder as you read through them. In class, we do not teach them all at once, but work our way through them systematically, introducing new sounds and words each day, working at the children’s pace. You may not need all of these words for your child but we have included this document as it can be useful to print and cut out some of the words to use as flash cards if you wish to.
• Ten tips for reading stories to your child : a lovely one page information sheet with some nice, simple ideas to use at home.
• Oxford Owl website : This has lots of information for parents about supporting with reading. Many parents tell us they prefer to use the videos to help learn and practise the sounds, and there are some excellent, easy to follow videos on the Oxford Owl website (which is linked to Read Write Inc). We highly recommend taking a look! We also like to use Mr Thorne’s videos – he uses a puppet giraffe called Geraldine to explain and explore the sounds and words. These videos can easily be found on YouTube, as well as many others.

Read Write Inc.

Once children are fluent readers and have strong phonic knowledge, they progress to learn spelling patterns, continuing to follow the proven Read, Write, Inc which is underpinned by phonics. Engaging daily spelling activities prepare our children for the demands of the statutory spelling assessments in England.

Class learning is further supported by home access to online activities to practice and consolidate taught spelling patterns, enabling faster progress.

Reading

Our aim is to foster a love of reading in our pupils and we encourage pupils to read a wide variety of books by introducing them to a broad range of text through taught reading and writing sessions as well as regularly sharing stories and poetry for pleasure.
We are fortunate to have a large, well-stocked library and our Year 6 librarians take pride in their role in promoting a love of reading. Reading buddies support younger children to develop their independent reading and our termly Badgerbrook Book News keeps children and carers updated about reading in school as well as recommended reads.
Once the Read Write Inc scheme has embedded early reading strategies, we use whole class reading sessions to further develop core reading skills including: decoding (KS1), explaining, retrieval, inference, author choice, vocabulary, prediction and summarisation. Pupils engage with progressively challenging, high-quality texts covering a range of fiction genres, non-fiction and poetry.
Should you be looking for inspiration for your child’s next reading book, please use the following links for recommendations:

• The Reader Teacher
• Primary Book Lists by Topic (booksfortopics.com)

Both offer diverse lists of high-quality fiction and non-fiction by age-range.

Writing

Writing at Badgerbrook follows the Talk for Writing teaching framework: an engaging approach which enables children to imitate the language they need for their writing orally before reading and analysing a model text which they can then innovate, writing their own version. This approach progresses pupils through the grammar, creative and technical language skills required to be an effective writer, with high expectations for the selection and application of ambitious vocabulary.

Across the curriculum, pupils are provided additional opportunities to apply skills previously taught during English lessons. Where possible, non-fiction writing links to the half-term’s topic or science ‘Big Question’ with children being provided real-life, engaging audiences and purposes.