At St Nicholas CE Primary Academy we are a phonics first school!  We know that by showing fidelity to our Read, Write, Inc. phonics programme, EVERY child will learn to read. We know that by learning to read, we are ensuring our children have every opportunity to be successful in their future lives.

From the first day a child arrives in our school, they will quickly be assessed and placed into the correct phonics group for them, ensuring that they are taught at the correct challenge point to enable them to make progress in their reading.  We believe in 'keep up not catch up' so all children are given support in an intervention group or 1:1 session by one of our reading teachers if they need any extra help.

For more information about our RWI phonics click the link below.

Fred Talk

At school we use a puppet called Fred who only speaks in sounds. We call this Fred Talk. For example, Fred would say d-o-g, we would say dog. Your child is taught to hear sounds and blend them together to say words.

As your child learns each sound (phoneme), they are also taught to blend the sounds together to say and read CVC words such as mat, sit, pin.

Fred Fingers

Fred Fingers are used for spelling. Your child is taught to sound out the word they are spelling and put up the correct number of fingers for the sounds they can hear in the word. For example: m-e-t = 3 sounds = 3 fingers. 

Green Words

When your child can orally blend sounds to say words, your child will start to read ‘green’ words. ‘Green’ words are words which can be sounded out and blended.

Red Words

When children start to read short ditties, your child will be taught to read ‘red’ words. These words are words with ‘tricky letters’ which can’t be sounded out phonetically.  Your child will be taught the red words in a specific order, which will correlate with the books they are reading in lessons.

Decodable Reading Books

Whilst your child is learning their initial sounds in Reception, they will bring home a story to share with you from our library in their book bag, which will be changed each week. This will give them the opportunity to develop a range of important reading skills. Once your child can blend the sounds they know to read words, they will bring home a Read Write Inc. book bag book which will contain words and sounds that children have been taught. They will also have their own Oxford Owl account, giving them access to the phonics book they have been reading in school. Children should practise reading these books regularly throughout the week so that they can read them confidently, fluently and independently.

Reading for Pleasure

At St Nicholas CE Primary Academy our aim is to empower every child with a love of reading!  We know that children who develop an early love of reading, will continue to read throughout their lives and we therefore have protected time  in our classes each day for children to enjoy being read to by an adult.  During our daily story times, a range of stories are shared from a variety of different authors.  

Each week, every child in our school has the opportunity to visit our school library where one of our librarians is on hand to help them to choose their own reading for pleasure book to take home and share with their families.

Talk Through Stories

Alongside their phonics lessons, our early readers are also part of a talk through stories lesson each day.  Talk Through Stories is for all children, but it is especially for children who do not come from a language rich home. It is designed to extend and deepen children’s vocabulary so that they can understand the books they will soon be able to read for themselves. Each week a new story is shared and the children spend time each day listening to, joining in with and retelling the story!