At St Nicholas we are thoroughly enjoying the Read Write Inc scheme to learn our sounds. Your child has been placed in a RWI group for their phonics learning. The children will go to their group for an hour a day where they will learn their sounds, read a book and complete a writing task based on the book they have been reading. Outside of our RWI lessons, your child will have plenty of writing opportunities across our curriculum. We also deliver a reading lesson every day which begins with handwriting and then we look at our exciting story or text for that week answering VIPER questions as we go. After our reading lesson the children take part in singing popular nursery rhymes and vocabulary games. 

RWI 

As already stated, your child has been put into a phonics group which they go to daily to learn and practise their sounds, to read a story that they can decode with the sounds they've already learnt and to do a writing task that links with their book. Your child's RWI teacher will send home a book that your child can read with confidence. This means that for some children, their book may seem a little easy for them however, we want children to feel confident in their reading and to build fluency. This is also why we expect the children to read their RWI book at least 3 times a week if not more. Re-reading a book helps a children develop fluency and expression. Your child's RWI teacher will change your child's book on a Monday and the expectation is that your child's phonics book is in school at all times as there are plenty of opportunities for Miss Ingamells to hear your child read. Your child will also be set homework on the Oxford Owl website from Thursday to Thursday. The homework is based on the book that your child is reading. You will be sent the e-book version as well as a quiz. Your child will also have the chance every week to borrow a book from our school library. This is a book that children aren't expected to read but instead for you to share with your child, to show a love of reading. If you have any questions about RWI and your child's reading, please don't hesitate to speak to Miss Smith. 

Reading

This term, we have some exciting books to read. Our traditional tale is 'Jack and the Beanstalk' which links well with our science topic 'plants'. 

In fact, a lot of our books this term have connections with our science topic and our topic 'Wriggle and Crawl'. We will be looking at the classic story 'The Hungry Caterpillar' which is a story most children know well. We will be reading the story and giving the children opportunities to order the story and to retell the story which Gospels are great at! We will also be looking at the story 'The Tiny Seed' which follows the journey of a seed through the seasons. Our two non-fiction books for this term are called 'Plants for Dinner' and 'Plants'. Towards the end of term we will be looking at poems from the poetry book 'Hey Little Bug' which features some poems about the minibeasts we will be studying. 

The questions we ask during are reading lessons are based on VIPERS.