Little Wandle Phonics and Early Reading

Vision

At St Joseph’s, we strive to give every child the confidence to be fluent, confident and happy readers, who enjoy reading for pleasure. Reading really is the ‘bread and butter’ of our curriculum, and we ensure that every child can achieve success through our systematic, synthetic phonics programme Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised. At St Joseph’s no child is left behind, and children requiring support with their Phonics from Year 2 upwards, are given regular Phonics and reading interventions, encouraging them to become confident and fluent readers.

A learner in Phonics will able to  read their decodable book with confidence, demonstrating an increasing level of prosody and  be able to ask and answer questions about the text they are reading.

How Phonics is taught at St Joseph’s

• Phonics is taught for 30 minutes every day at St Joseph’s. From the early days in Reception, we build up to this 30 minutes, initially starting from 10 minute sessions when the children first start school.
• Children are taught four new phonemes from Monday to Thursday, with corresponding graphemes (GPCs) and the Friday lesson is a review of the previous four days. Tricky words are also taught within these sessions.
• All lessons are planned and structured following the Little Wandle planning, and corresponding flashcards are used.
• Children in Reception start learning Phase 2 from Autumn 1 term, and progress onto Phase 3 from Spring 1 term, finally learning Phase 4 from Summer 1 term, in line with the Little Wandle planning structure. Year 1 begin with their year with reviewing Phase 3 and Phase 4, swiftly then moving onto Phase 5 graphemes.
• Children in Reception and Year 1 will be given a reading book closely matched to their Phonetic knowledge. This book is practised three times a week, with each reading session focusing on: fluency, prosody and comprehension. These reading practice sessions are taken in small groups, and led by a member of staff who is trained in the Little Wandle programme. We aim for all children to be reading with 90% fluency by the time they take their book home after the three reading practice sessions, enabling them to read with confidence when they read the book with adults at home.

Children at St Joseph’s feel confident in their Phonic knowledge to become confident and fluent readers, which in turn, fosters a love of reading.

By taking home books that are closely matched to their Phonic knowledge, children can celebrate and share their reading with adults at home, giving them the confidence and motivation to read regularly. Children will achieve well in their EYFS, KS1 and KS2 end of assessment points for reading, and Year 1 children will have the required skills and knowledge to pass the Phonics screening check.

Overall, at St Joseph’s we want our children to be life-long readers and to leave our school at the end of Year 6 with the confidence and enthusiasm to read widely and often.

Please see the progression programme below for Reception and Year 1:

How to progress

Please watch the following two videos in order to see the progress your child can make in a week from reading the same book over the 3 reading sessions, along with practise at home everyday. You will notice this child is much more fluent after practise with this book, as well as reading with prosody (using a storytelling voice and using stress and intonation when reading). This is why it is so essential for your child to practise reading their reading book everyday at home, in order for them to make as much progress as possible with their reading.

Find more Little Wandle resources for parents and carers.

Reception Autumn 1 sounds

Download a guide to how children are taught to say their sounds in Reception Autumn 1.

Reception Autumn 2 sounds

Download a guide to how children are taught to say their sounds in Reception Autumn 2.

Reception Spring 1 sounds

Download a guide to how children are taught to say their sounds in Reception Spring 1.