At St Barnabas and St Paul’s Church of England Primary School, our vision is that we become the best for God that we can be, in all we do, whilst demonstrating Christian values which are pertinent to all faiths.

Our vision is based on Colossians 3:23, ‘Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as though you were working for the Lord and not for people.'

St Barnabas and St Paul’s recognises the vital importance of reading for children’s future opportunities. With this in mind, we strive to teach children to read and write both effectively and quickly. The ability to efficiently decode is essential and therefore our aim is to teach the core skills of segmenting and blending through the systematic teaching of phonics. We want children to understand the relationship between sounds and letters, recognising that the letters on the page represent the sounds in spoken words. Our aim is for children to make sustained progress in learning to read fluently and write with confidence in an enjoyable way. These fundamental skills not only hold the key to the rest of the curriculum, but also have a huge impact on children’s self-esteem and future life chances.

At St Barnabas and St Paul’s, we use a systematic phonics programme called Read Write Inc.

Using Read Write Inc Phonics, pupils will:

• develop their vocabulary through role play and discussion
• develop speaking and listening skills
• learn the grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) in a clear sequence, from the simple alphabetic code, to phonemes with alternative graphemes
• learn to decode words by identifying the graphemes and blending the phonemes using Fred Talk (e.g. c-a-t)

• learn to spell words by segmenting them into phonemes
• make phonetically plausible attempts to spell words correctly
• write simple sentences with confidence
• select the correct GPC for words that contain sounds that have more than one GPC (eg. ay, ai, a-e)
• read red words and common exception words quickly and correctly
• spell red words and common exception words accurately

How you can help at home:

• Read with your child every night, encouraging them to Fred Talk when they come across a difficult word
• Practise the sounds at home
• Make sure that children attend school every day as this will help your child to make the most progress
• Visit the Parents section of the RWI website for more tips, techniques and helpful hints

“Learning to read is like learning to run. The more you practise, the faster you become.” Sophie Carter