Phonics

Phonics in Reception at Robert Kett 

At Robert Kett, we strive for every child to develop a love of reading. Reading opens the door to adventures, mysteries, imagination and awe and wonder, as well as learning a whole host of life long skills such as language skills, speech development and building vocabulary. 

At Robert Kett, we follow the Read Write Inc Phonics programme (RWI) to give your child the best possible start with their literacy. In Reception all children will learn how to recognise the sounds in words and how these words will be written down. Please click here to watch a video explaining what Read Write Inc Phonics is. 

Reception

In Reception, all children will learn how to identify the sounds in words and how these sounds are written. There is a specific order that sounds are taught. Each sound taught has a picture and saying to help the children form the letters correctly. The first set of sounds that are taught to the children are shown below. It is important that you do not teach your child the letter names at this stage as it can become confusing for them. 

Click here to watch a video on how to produce the sounds correctly.

Once the children have learnt the Set 1 sounds, we then move on to Set 2 sounds - the long vowels. Both sets are shown below. 

Alien words (nonsense words)

As well as learning to read and blend real words, the children are also given plenty of opportunities to apply their sound recognition and blending skills on reading nonsense words. Alien words also feature in the Year One Phonics Screening in the Summer Term.

Ditty Books

The children will be introduced to Ditty books when they begin to successfully read single words. The children will then use their knowledge of sound blending (fred talking) to read short ditties. They will bring these home on a weekly basis after they have been introduced in school. The children will then be challenged to use their deepening phonic knowledge to write short sentences. All of the books will have red and green words to learn to help them become speedy readers. Red words are not easily decodable and green words are linked to the sounds they have been learning and are easily decodable. 

When your child begins to bring these books home, please give them lots of praise to help them become confident readers. If they make a mistake, ask them to take another look and or model it correctly, try not to use the language of ‘that’s wrong’. If you have any questions at all, please speak to your child’s class teacher.

When your child begins to bring these books home, please give them lots of praise to help them become confident readers. If they make a mistake, ask them to take another look and or model it correctly, try not to use the language of ‘that’s wrong’. If you have any questions at all, please speak to your child’s class teacher.