Intent
English and the teaching of English is the foundation of our curriculum. Our intent is to ensure every single child becomes primary literate, that they know more and remember more in order to progress in the areas of reading, writing, speaking and listening.
We follow the Government accredited scheme Little Wandle. Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised is a complete systematic synthetic phonics programme (SSP) developed for schools by schools. Based on the original Letters and Sounds, but extensively revised to provide a complete teaching programme meeting all the expectations of the National Curriculum, the Ofsted Deep Dive into reading and preparing your children to go beyond the expectations of the Phonics Screening Check. We start teaching Little Wandle in EYFS, which ensures that children build upon their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school. As a result, it is our intent that all our children are able to tackle any unfamiliar words as they read. We also model the application of the alphabetic code through phonics in shared reading and writing, both inside and outside of the phonics lesson and across the curriculum. We have a strong focus on language development for our children because we know that speaking and listening are crucial skills for reading and writing in all subjects.
Our intention is to rapidly build phonics skills and confidence in order to produce confident blending and decoding skills to assist pupils’ basic reading and spelling skills. Strong phonics skills and knowledge of common exception words build good comprehension skills and confident readers.
In addition to the daily phonics lessons, each child in EYFS and Year 1 (as well as children in Year 2 who did not achieve their phonics screening check) take part in three reading practice sessions per week. In these sessions decoding, fluency and comprehension are all focussed on, as well as encouraging a love of reading.
Little Wandle
Click on the image below to find out more about Little Wandle
Little Wandle Key Documents
Click on the documents and videos below to find out about the Little Wandle scheme and how you can support your child with their Phonics learning.
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Homework
For children in EYFS and Year 1 a Weekly Phonics Round-up will be sent home each Friday. This is for adults to keep up to date with what their child is learning at school and gives words and activities for your child to apply their learning. Click on the Documents below to see example Round-ups.
Phonics Screening Check
The children in Year 1 complete a Phonics Screening Check every year. This enables the teacher to see if they have any gaps in their knowledge. The Phonics Screening Check is made up of nonsense and real words and is to test how well the children can read using their sound blends. Please see below for an example of the Phonics Screening Check. Any children who do not pass this test at the end of Year 1 will complete another Phonics Screening Check at the end of Year 2, this will happen each year until the child achieves a pass rate mark.
Letter Formation
Alongside the teaching of phonics, we teach correct letter formation. Please see below for instructions and examples of this.
Key Stage 1 Useful Websites
Please use the website links below to help support your child with their learning of phonics.
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Keep up and Catch up
All children take part in their class phonics sessions. However some children may struggle to keep up with their year group reading and writing age and this is when Rapid Catch Up and Daily Keep Up sessions are introduced. Teachers use assessments to identify any gaps that a child may have and use the Little Wandle Daily keep up plan to address these areas. The child will work with a skilled and fully trained teacher or teaching assistant to focus on key skills and GPCs that they are not yet confident on. Daily Keep Up sessions are not stopped until the child can blend and read words independently relating to their year group age. These interventions are used throughout EYFS, KS1 and KS2.
For a small amount of children these Daily Keep Up sessions may not be enough, in these circumstances Little Wandle Rapid Catch Up sessions are used. Rapid Catch Up is for any child in Year 2 or above who cannot read at age-related expectations and needs targeted support so that they can access the curriculum and enjoy reading as soon as possible.
SEND
At St Peter's we use the Little Wandle SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) programme that mirrors the main Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised phonics programme but with adaptations and support in place that make it possible to meet the needs of all learners. It has been created to help children learn to read and write using the right level of challenge for each child and uses a graduated approach if needed. Some children with SEND will require very few or very small adaptations to the main Little Wandle programme (to meet their sensory needs, for example). Other children will need fundamental changes to the pace and progression of the programme to meet their more complex needs.
English as an Additional Language
Children starting our school with English as an additional language will take part in all phonics sessions alongside their year group peers. This is to ensure that children access the graphemes and phonemes at their age related expectations. Children with EAL will be assessed by their class teacher using the Little Wandle placement assessment, these assessments will inform teachers of the child's current phonics knowldge and what phonic phase they are working at. Once this assessment has taken place, teachers will then use the Rapid Catch Up sessions to help the child to quickly progress through the phonic phases.