Woodlands School

Read Write Inc.

Woodlands School is using RWInc to provide a consistent approach to Phonics across the school.

The RWInc programme has five key principles:

Participation - children participate fully in the whole lesson - this prevents them from losing concentration and missing key elements of the teaching.
Praise - children work together, taking turns to teach and praise one another, as well as receiving praise from teachers and assistants.
Pace - a lively pace ensures engagement.
Purpose - teachers know the purpose of each activity and how it leads to the next.
Passion - teachers are passionate about their teaching as they see their children making rapid progress.

Children are put into groups based on their phonics stage and monitored by a "Reading Leader" who is a non-teaching member of staff. This person has an overview of all pupils on the programme and the continue to assess the pupils placement, resources and achievements.

Woodlands faces different challenges to many other schools when implementing a generic programme such as RWI. No challenge is insurmountable but we need to give careful consideration to the needs of our pupils. To support this we decided to implement an approach called MOFF.

Masterclass - Observation - Face to Face feedback.

A masterclass focuses on specific areas of teaching, this could include: hand signals, positioning of pupils or praise. All groups are then visited by the Reading Leader or Headteacher for observation of the topic discussed. Feedback is then given on this topic either face-to-face or on a feedback card.

This method of continuous assessment has paid dividends. Pupils are now able to begin, maintain and finish paired reading activities without adult direction. They offer praise and mutual support, exactly as it would happen in a mainstream school.