Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised is a complete systematic synthetic phonics programme (SSP) developed for schools by schools. It has been extensively revised to provide a complete teaching programme which meets all the expectations of the National Curriculum and enables children to apply their learning and become fluent readers.

Phonics begins in Reception with a daily session working on the grapheme–phoneme correspondence and blending to read. Daily phonic sessions continue into Year 1 and the Autumn term in Year 2.

Throughout the phonics programme, progress is tracked and monitored closely to identify children who require ‘keep up’ sessions. These short sessions will be specific to individual needs and will take place throughout the school day. For our learners with SEND we follow the Little Wandle's SEND programme. 

Children will continue to receive ‘keep-up’ interventions if needed until they have a secure knowledge of the phonic phases 1-5.

All graphemes that are taught are practised in words, sentences and fully decodable books. For this, we use Collins Big Cats Letters and Sounds books that are decodable and match each letters and sounds phase. 

Our aim is for the children to learn to read as quickly as reasonably possible, so they can move from learning to read, to reading to learn, giving them the access to the treasure house of reading. 

Why learning to read is so important

• Reading is essential for all subject areas and improves life chances.
• Positive attitudes to reading and choosing to read have academic, social and emotional benefits for children.

How children learn to read

• Phonics is the only route to decoding.
• Learning to say the phonics sounds.
• By blending phonic sounds to read words.
• Increasing the child's fluency in reading sounds, words and books.

Support for Parents

Please follow the link to the ‘Little Wandle For Parents’ website to access the resources page which will help you support your child with saying their sounds and writing their letters. There are also some useful videos so you can see how they are taught at school and feel confident about supporting their reading at home.

https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/