Key Information

Ash class team

Mrs Turnbull Class teacher

Mrs Lewis Class teaching assistant

Mrs Van-Bussel Class teaching assistant

Mrs Young 1:1 teaching assistant

Home learning

Home learning (including spellings) will be handed out on a Friday and collected back in on the following Thursday. The home learning will be designed as an extension to activities and topics covered in class. If your child is struggling to complete their home learning, please let me know and I will support in any way that I can.

The children's PE lessons will take place every Friday. Please send your child to school wearing the appropriate PE kit on this day.

Reading

The children's 'Phonics Book' and it's corresponding 'Book Bag Book' will be sent home on a three day rotation based on the learning they have done in their phonics group that week. Some weeks it may come home on the fourth or fifth day depending on the children's understanding and fluency within their groupings.

Children will only be sent home with a new book after returning their previous book. It is important the children come to school every day with both books and their reading record.

Phonics

We use Read Write Inc. as our phonics scheme to encourage progress in reading. Children are given fully decodeable RWI 'book bag' books each week, which link to their phonetic level.

Read Write Inc - Our Phonics Scheme

The Government strongly recommend the use of synthetic phonics when teaching early literacy skills to children. Synthetic phonics is simply the ability to convert a letter or letter group into sounds that are then blended together into a word.

At Ruishton, we use the Read Write Inc (RWI) programme to get children off to a flying start with their early literacy. RWI is a method of learning based upon letter sounds and phonics, and we use it to aid children in their reading and writing.

Reading opens the door to learning. A child who reads a lot will become a good reader. A good reader will be able to read more challenging material. A child who can read more challenging material is a child who will learn. The more a child learns, the more he or she will want to find out.

The children are assessed regularly and grouped according to their ability. They will work with a RWI trained teacher or teaching assistant.

Reading

When using RWI to read the children will:

Learn 44 sounds and the corresponding letter/letter groups using simple prompts
Learn to read words using sound blending (Fred talk)
Read lively stories featuring words they have learnt to sound out
Show that they comprehend the stories by answering 'Find It' and 'Prove It'

The following video is an example of blending sounds with Fred. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEzfpod5w_Q

Writing

When using RWI to write the children will:

Learn to write the letter/letter groups which represent the 44 sounds
Learn to write words by saying the sounds and graphemes (Fred fingers)

Talking

When using RWI the children will also work in pairs:

To answer questions
To take turns talking and listening to each other
To give positive praise to each other

Blending

Help your child learn to read words by sounding-blending (Fred talk) eg. c-a-t = cat, sh-o-p = shop. Children learn to read words by blending the letter-sounds that are in the Speed Sounds set (shown further down the page).

Help your child to say the pure sounds ('m' not 'muh', 's' not 'suh' etc.) as quickly as they can, and then blend the sounds together to say the whole word.

Finally, don't worry if your child is struggling at first with their sounds and words, they will get there in their own time. If you have time (we know it is very precious!), we would urge you to try and read stories to your child before they go to bed. This will help develop a wider vocabulary which makes a vast difference to their quality of writing but it will also encourage them to enjoy a good story.