Using Spelling Shed Alongside Read Write Inc. Phonics

When schools choose to use Spelling Shed alongside Read Write Inc. Phonics, they often ask how it aligns. Spelling Shed can work hand-in-hand with Read Write Inc. Phonics.

Remember that phonics schemes are designed to meet the National Curriculum objectives for word reading and often miss spelling objectives. Therefore, we recommend using Spelling Shed from Years 1 and 2.

What do you need to consider?

When looking at Spelling Shed alongside Read Write Inc. Phonics, you will need to consider how the grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) are taught. Below is how some of the GPCs are taught differently in Read Write Inc. Phonics and Spelling Shed. There is no correct or incorrect way, they are just different ways.

Side-by-side comparison showing how Spelling Shed and Read Write Inc represent GPCs.

Below is Spelling Shed’s alphabetic code, which shows you how Spelling Shed teaches each GPC. You will need to compare this to Read Write Inc. Phonics’ alphabetic code, which is called your Complex Speed Sounds Chart.

Spelling Shed's Alphabetic Code Chart. Down the left side are phonemes and the chart shows which graphemes represent the phonemes.

View and download Spelling Shed’s full alphabetic code chart here.

You may notice these differences in the scheme. If the child/children are already secure in their phonics learning, then you do not need to tell them to change the way they are representing the GPC.

For example, when looking at the slide below, you can explain, “You can group ‘nk’ together as a phoneme too, so if you had five phonemes, you are also correct.”

Slide titled 'Sound Boxes and Syllables' showing how to break words into syllables using Elkonin boxes. The word 'possibly' is segmented into boxes and divided into three syllables. Additional examples include 'terribly', 'durably' and 'wrinkly', each shown with Elkonin boxes and three syllable breaks. Speech bubbles explain that each syllable has a vowel sound and that digraphs and trigraphs represent one sound.

You will need to consider Read Write Inc. Phonics’ progression and ensure that any objective in Spelling Shed is revisited after it has been taught in phonics. Revisiting the objective is not simply a recap but should build upon the initial learning in the phonics session.

Spelling Shed's Stage 1 Medium Term Plan. It is split into half terms. There are 36 steps or objectives split over the year and it shows the words included in each step/objective.

Below is the completed spiral medium term plan for Phonics Shed and Spelling Shed. This is free to download and may help you.

Phonics Shed and Spelling Shed medium term plan for Year 1.
It is split into each half term across the top and weeks of each half term down the side. It is split into phonics and spelling showing the objective and graphemes taught in phonics compared to the objective and words taught in spelling.

Example – digraph ‘ir’ representing the /ur/ sound.

Phonics Shed objective- Chapter 4a Set 3 ‘aw’/or/, ‘au’/or/, word endings ‘ore’/or/, ‘ir’/ur/ and ‘oy’/oi/ HFW: ‘saw’, ‘because’

National Curriculum statutory requirement – Teach the digraph ‘ir’

You can see in the medium term plan for Year 1 that this digraph is taught in Autumn Week 5 in phonics and then revisited in a spelling session in Spring 2 Week 3.

If you move any of the weeks around, make sure you check the words to ensure the GPCs in the words have already been taught. All Spelling Shed word lists can be edited.

Remember that everything in Spelling Shed is statutory, all of the objectives on Spelling Shed’s medium tem plan objectives link directly to a statutory requirement from the National Curriculum.

Download the spiral medium-term plan for Spelling Shed and Phonics Shed here.

Download Spelling Shed’s medium term plan here.