Phonics and Early Reading

Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised

We teach phonics using a scheme called Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. The progression has been devised so that children are taught a cumulative progression of GPCs (grapheme-phoneme correspondence) that they immediately practise through oral blending, reading and spelling words and sentences, and, later on, reading fully decodable books. Children review and revise GPCs and words daily, weekly and across terms and years in order to move this knowledge into their long-term memory. The programme lends itself to a mastery approach to teaching phonics. This means that all children in the class learn the same content at the same time, and it applies the principle of all the children keeping up. Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised promotes children’s engagement in learning through: teacher energy and enthusiasm, extensive interaction between teachers and children in lessons, generous praise and encouragement and building on and celebrating success.

All children from Year R to Year 2 have two daily sessions. One phonic session and one reading session. These start at 20 minutes in Reception going up to 30 minutes in Year 1 and 2. We understand that all children progress at different rates and will be offering support and ‘catch up’ sessions to those that require it.

Children are taught with books that match their secure phonic knowledge. Children read the same book aloud in each of the three reading sessions with growing automaticity and accuracy. The pre-read and independent reading parts of the sessions are essential in providing the repeated practice needed for children to build fluency. All children will be sent home with the reading book that they have been reading after their third session. Please support your child at home with reading to build up their fluency.

For more information on Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised or how to support your child at home, please visit the website here.

Year 1 Phonics check

In Year 1 all children will take a statutory phonics check. Please read the information below and if you have any questions please ask Miss Read, Miss McCarthy or your child’s class teacher.

What is the phonics screening check?

The National phonics screening check is a statutory assessment that was introduced in 2012 to all Year 1 pupils and is a quick and easy check of your child’s phonics knowledge.

It consists of a list of 40 words and nonsense words. It will assess phonics skills and knowledge learnt through Reception and Year 1. Your child will read one‐one with a teacher. Your child will read up to 4 words per page, and they will probably do the check in 10‐15 minutes. They will be asked to ‘sound out’ a word and blend the sounds together. The check is very similar to tasks the children already complete during phonics lessons.

How will the results from the screening be used?

You will be informed of your child’s progress in phonics and how he or she has done in the screening check, towards the end of the summer term. Your child’s teacher will use the score to help your child progress. If your child does fall below the pass mark, then they will be given some extra support to re-take the test in Year 2.