Read Write Inc Books at Home: A Parent's Guide to the Levels

Read Write Inc books come in colour levels, and the colour is set by which sounds a child has been taught, not by their age or how well they read. A child works through Set 1, Set 2 and Set 3 sounds, and the Storybooks follow behind in a fixed order: Red Ditty, Green, Purple, Pink, Orange, Yellow, Blue, Grey. The book that comes home in the book bag is deliberately at a level your child can already read on their own. It is meant to be easy.

What are the Read Write Inc levels, in order?

There are two ladders running at once, and they are not the same ladder. Sounds are grouped into three Sets. Storybooks are grouped by colour. The colour tells you which Set the child is working within.

The "roughly when" column is the one to hold loosely. Read Write Inc groups children by the sounds they know rather than by class, so a Year 1 child on Green and a Reception child on Green are on the same book and that is entirely normal. Schools reassess and regroup regularly, which is why a child can jump two colours in a term and then sit on one for six weeks.

What sounds are in Set 1, Set 2 and Set 3?

Set 1 is the single letters, taught in this order: m, a, s, d, t, i, n, p, g, o, c, k, u, b, f, e, l, h, r, j, v, y, w, z, x. Alongside them come the first special friends, which is the Read Write Inc name for two or three letters making one sound: sh, th, ch, qu, ng, nk and ck. A child at the end of Set 1 can read words like ship, chat, bang and duck.

Set 2 adds the long vowel sounds: ay, ee, igh, ow (as in blow), oo (as in zoo), oo (as in look), ar, or, air, ir, ou (as in out) and oy. Twelve sounds, and they open up most simple stories. This is where reading usually starts to feel like reading.

Set 3 is the long tail, and it is the biggest jump: ea, oi, a-e, i-e, o-e, u-e, aw, are, ur, er, ow (as in brown), ai, oa, ew, ire, ear and ure. The point of Set 3 is that one sound can be spelled several ways. A child who has learned ay in day now meets ai in rain and a-e in cake. Children who sailed through Reception often find this genuinely hard, and that is the expected shape of it rather than a warning sign.

Those split spellings written as a-e, i-e, o-e and u-e are what Read Write Inc calls split digraphs. The two letters make one sound with a consonant sitting in the middle, as in cake, smile, home and huge.

What is a Book Bag Book, and why is it not the book they read in school?

This is the single most common source of confusion, and it is worth getting straight.

The Storybook is read in school, in a small group, several times across the week. The Book Bag Book is what comes home. It is a different story, but it is built from the same phonic content and the same green words as the Storybook your child has just spent the week on.

So it is not the same book, and it is not a harder book. It is a second run at the same sounds with fresh words, which is exactly what builds fluency. If you have been checking the title against what the teacher said and getting confused, that is why.

The Book Bag Book is practice, not assessment. Nobody is testing your child at your kitchen table.

Why does the book look far too easy?

Because it is supposed to. By the time a book reaches your house, your child has already worked through the matching sounds and the matching words in school. The home read is the victory lap.

Read Write Inc is explicit with parents about this. The guidance is to avoid saying a book looks too simple, and to praise the reading instead. Fluency is built by reading easy things quickly, not by reading hard things slowly. A child who reads a whole book without stalling gets something out of it that no amount of struggling through a harder text provides, which is the feeling of being a reader.

The thing to watch for is the opposite: a book with sounds in it your child has not been taught. That is a mismatch, and it quietly teaches guessing, which is the exact habit the whole programme is designed to prevent.

What is Fred Talk, and should I be doing it at home?

Fred is a toy frog who can only speak in sounds. When Fred says "c-a-t", the children say "cat". That is Fred Talk, and it is just oral blending with a character attached so that four-year-olds will do it willingly.

Yes, use it at home, and use it in this order:

1. Fred Talk out loud. You say the sounds, they say the word.
2. Fred Talk in a whisper. Same thing, quieter.
3. Fred in your head. They blend silently and just say the word.

The third stage is the destination. Children who stay stuck sounding out loud for months usually have not been nudged towards doing it silently.

One rule: sound out the sounds, not the letter names. It is "c-a-t", not "see-ay-tee". Letter names actively get in the way at this stage.

Green words and red words: which can be sounded out?

Green words are decodable using sounds the child has been taught. Fred Talk works on them.

Red words are the exceptions, the ones Read Write Inc says to "stop and think" about instead. Words like said, was, one and the break the rules the child currently knows, so there is nothing useful to sound out. Trying to Fred Talk a red word produces frustration and nothing else.

If your child stops dead on said, that is not a phonics failure. Tell them the word and carry on.

What should ten minutes at home actually look like?

• Wait longer than feels comfortable. Count to five before you help. Most children get there at four.
• If they stall, give the sounds, not the word. "s-t-o-p" hands the win back to them.
• Do not ask them to guess from the picture. Picture guessing is the habit these books exist to break.
• Read it more than once. The second read is where fluency actually appears.
• Stop while they still want more. Ten good minutes beat twenty that end in tears.

And read to them as well, from books far above their level. The reading they do is phonics practice. The reading you do to them is where vocabulary and a taste for stories come from, and the two jobs are not interchangeable.

How is my child's colour decided, and how often does it change?

By assessment, not by age and not by their class teacher's impression. Children are assessed on the sounds they can read and how quickly they can blend them, then grouped with other children at the same point. Schools typically reassess every half term, sometimes more often for children moving quickly.

Two things follow from that, and both surprise parents.

The first is that the groups are cross-class and often cross-year. Your Year 1 child may be taught phonics by a teacher who is not their class teacher, alongside children from other classes. That is how the programme is designed to work, not a sign anything has gone wrong.

The second is that movement is expected and normal in both directions. A child can move up two colours after one assessment and then hold at a colour for half a term while fluency catches up with decoding. Holding is not stalling. Reading a level accurately is only half of it, and the second half, reading it at a comfortable speed with expression, is what the extra weeks are for.

If you want to know where your child is, the useful question to ask is not "what level are they on" but "which sounds are they secure on, and which are they still working at". That answer tells you what to practise.

What if the level looks wrong?

Tell the teacher, and be specific about which it is.

Too hard usually means another week at the current colour rather than a different book. If your child is stopping on more than roughly one word in ten, the level is wrong for now.

Too easy is far more common and usually intentional. Before raising it, check whether they are reading it fluently and with expression, or just accurately. Accurate but flat means the level is right and the fluency work is still doing its job.

Schools reassess Read Write Inc groups on a regular cycle, so a mismatch is often just a few weeks from being fixed anyway.

Where to read more

Oxford University Press publishes a parent guide to Read Write Inc Phonics on Oxford Owl, and Ruth Miskin Training publishes a set of parent FAQs. Your child's school will also have its own overview showing which colour each group is on this term, which is the one that tells you where your child actually is this week.

Lindo Phonics is not connected to Read Write Inc, Ruth Miskin Training or Oxford University Press, and is not endorsed by them. We match the published progression so that a story only uses sounds your child has already been taught.