RWI Phonics

Our goal is for all children to be readers by the time they leave school and phonics plays an integral role in their reading journey. Children must be attuned to the sounds around them and have the  speaking and listening skills which lay the foundations for early reading skills to be developed in preparation to begin developing oral blending and segmenting skills. Later synthetic phonic lessons which are planned and delivered following a carefully planned systematic approach should support the mastery method of ‘skilled word reading which involves both the speedy working out of the pronunciation of unfamiliar printed words (decoding) and the speedy recognition of familiar printed words. Underpinning both is the understanding that the letters on the page represents the sounds in spoken words’ (DFE, 2014).