We are a Little Wandle School!
Little Wandle is a high quality tried and tested structured synthetic phonics program. It has been quality assured and validated by the Department for Education and is used widely by many schools.
Phonics teaching starts in Nursery where children will start to build awareness of sounds. In Reception children are introduced to written sounds for the first time. This builds in Year 1 where children are introduced to further new sounds and also sounds that have more than one spelling. In Year 2 children consolidate their learning and focus more on spelling and reading fluency.
Daily phonics sessions are also supported by adult lead reading practice sessions. In these sessions, children will develop their fluency, expression and comprehension of the text they are reading. Once the book has been completed in school, it will be available for home reading on the Collins eBook library.
Children that are falling behind expectations are offered daily keep-up sessions. These are reviewed every 3 weeks to ensure that every child is making progress.
We have chosen Little Wandle due to it’s well structured approach of introduction to new material alongside organised review of sounds already covered. It offers the school excellent training for our staff and ensures that our teaching is consistent across the school alongside thorough assessment tools to identify children that may need extra support to keep up.
You can find further information about the progression of teaching in the links below:
Reception programme progression
Further information can be found in the Phonics Policy.
Helping your child with reading
The best thing you can do to help your child in their reading is practise, practise, practise! The books that have been assigned to your child on the Collins eBook library are carefully matched to ensure children don’t come across sounds that they don’t know. They should be able to read these books easily. This is because we want children to enjoy reading and not struggle.
The Collins eBook library can be accessed via the app in a tablet or here:
https://ebooks.collinsopenpage.com/
At home take the opportunity to hear your child read and work on developing their fluency and flow by re-reading sections or pages. Practise using expression and character voices.
Here are some further ideas to help support children reaidng at home:
Reading for pleasure
Alongside your child’s decodable book, they will also bring home a ‘reading for pleasure’ book. This may be a book that your child is not ready to read independently yet. This book is for you to read to your child. Use this opportunity to talk about the content of the book including the plot and any interesting vocabulary.
Record keeping
Any reading your child does at home can be written onto their reading record. This includes books from school or books from home. Any reading counts! Just record the title and the date. If you have any comments about your child’s reading, get in touch with your child’s teacher via Class Dojo.