Phonics & Early Reading – Little Wandle
At Walberton & Binsted CE Primary School, we are committed to ensuring that every child becomes a confident, fluent and enthusiastic reader. We believe that reading is the key to unlocking learning across the curriculum and opens the door to lifelong opportunities and enjoyment.
To support children in becoming successful readers, we use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised systematic synthetic phonics programme which we start teaching as soon as the children join us in Reception.
Why We Use Little Wandle
We chose Little Wandle because it is a clear, structured and research-informed approach to the teaching of early reading and phonics. The programme provides a consistent progression of learning that helps children build secure foundations in decoding, fluency and comprehension.
Little Wandle supports children to:
- develop confidence and fluency in reading
- learn sounds and spelling patterns in a clearly sequenced way
- read accurately and with increasing automaticity
- develop a love of reading through high-quality texts
The programme also provides consistency across school, ensuring that all children receive high-quality phonics teaching and support.
How We Teach Phonics
Phonics is taught daily in Reception and Key Stage 1 through engaging, interactive whole-class lessons. Children are taught to:
- recognise graphemes and phonemes
- blend sounds to read words
- segment words for spelling
- read with increasing fluency and confidence
Lessons follow a clear and consistent structure with regular opportunities for rehearsal and repetition to help children retain and apply their learning.
Children are taught in whole-class groups so that all pupils can access high-quality teaching every day. Where additional support is needed, children receive timely keep-up sessions to help them stay on track.
Assessment and Progress
Children’s progress in phonics is carefully monitored through ongoing assessment and regular review. Assessments are used to ensure that teaching matches children’s needs and that any child requiring additional support is identified quickly.
Regular assessment enables us to:
- monitor progress closely
- identify gaps in learning
- provide targeted support
- ensure children keep up rather than catch up
Reading Practice Sessions
Alongside daily phonics lessons, children take part in regular reading practice sessions using fully decodable books that match the sounds they know.
These sessions are carefully planned to help children develop:
- decoding skills
- reading fluency
- expression and prosody
- comprehension and understanding
Children read the same book several times across the week to build confidence, accuracy and fluency.
Reading practice sessions are completed in small groups with a trained adult and are closely matched to each child’s phonic knowledge.
Supporting Reading at Home
We value the important role families play in helping children become successful readers. Children are encouraged to read regularly at home and share books with their families to help develop fluency, confidence and enjoyment of reading.
We provide guidance and support for parents so that phonics and early reading approaches are consistent between home and school.
Little Wandle provides a range of resources to help support parents with phonics from Nursery, Reception and Year 1.
The resources on the Little Wandle parent page can help you support your child with:
- saying their sounds correctly
- practising letter formation
- blending sounds to read words
- developing confidence when reading at home
There are also useful videos which demonstrate how phonics is taught in school so that parents and carers can feel confident supporting reading at home.
For more information and resources, please visit:
https://www.littlewandle.org.uk/resources/for-parents/
Developing a Love of Reading
At Walberton & Binsted CE Primary School, we believe learning to read should be both successful and enjoyable. Alongside phonics teaching, children experience a rich reading environment with high-quality stories, poems and non-fiction texts shared regularly throughout the school day.
Our aim is for every child to leave our school as a fluent, confident and enthusiastic reader.
