Read Write Inc vs Cornerstone - are they much different?

[Anonmumm2]

My ds1 is 5 and started reception this year. I would never have planned moving his school in his first year but due to work circumstances and the fact his school’s wraparound provider has pulled their provision twice already (which is essential to us) we are moving house (quite a big move to a different region). We decided that if we were going to move it would need to be before ds2 starts school next year (he would struggle to adjust more than ds1).

The new school uses Cornerstone (his current school uses Read Write Inc) and I am so worried about how different that might be for him and uprooting him. He’s doing incredibly well at school and he absolutely loves it so I feel really awful for moving him. He loves learning to read but I know he will struggle if he joins a class and it is completely different. I don’t want him to start from scratch.

Any advice would be much appreciated - in terms of the whole house move it is uprooting ds1 which is keeping me up at night :(

They're not really comparable things.

Read write inc is a phonics scheme to teach phonics only.

Cornerstones is a full curriculum, teaching all or most areas of learning.

Changing phonics schemes can be momentarily confusing because of different language (eg. Read write inc talks about "special friends" which are two letters that make one sound, also known as digraphs) and different orders that sounds are learnt in (one scheme teaches "ay" before "ai" and others teach those the other way round.

Changing curriculums can also be slightly confusing, although much less likely to be so in reception.

It won't be starting from scratch. The new school will assess him for everything and quickly get to see where he needs support.

I don't think you should feel guilty. Just big it up to ds - "How exciting! You're going to have so many new friends!" He'll be just fine, even if there's a brief sad period.

I just did a search and Cornerstones uses synthetic phonics, like RWI, so I don’t think you have much to worry about. The order in which sound-grapheme correspondences (= which (groups of ) letters represent which sounds) might differ slightly as will some of the terminology, but it will be pretty similar.