Little Wandle – Letters and Sounds Revised
At Palmer, we believe that all our children can become fluent readers and writers. This is why we teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching phonics in Nursery and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.
As a result, all our children are able to tackle any unfamiliar words as they read. At Palmer, we also model the application of the alphabetic code through phonics in shared reading practise and writing lessons, 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.
The systematic teaching of phonics, following Little Wandle Letters and Sounds revised, has a high priority throughout Foundation State and Key Stage One and the majority of our pupils develop good phonic skills.
In Key Stage Two, we do have some children who need additional time to develop their phonics skills. A significant number of pupils in KS2 who still require phonics teaching, have arrived from abroad or have missed significant amounts of school. The knowledge of KS2 pupils is assessed using our ‘placement assessment’ tool from Little Wandle Revised Letter and Sounds and children are place into the appropriate phase.
At Palmer, we value reading as a crucial life skill. By the time children leave us, they read confidently for meaning and regularly enjoy reading for pleasure. Our readers are equipped with the tools to tackle unfamiliar vocabulary. We encourage our children to see themselves as readers for both pleasure and purpose.
Because we believe teaching every child to read is so important, we have a Reading Leader who drives the early reading programme in our school. This person is highly skilled at teaching phonics and reading, and they monitor and support our reading team, so everyone teaches with fidelity to the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme.
For further information about our phonics programme please read our Phonics and Early Reading Policy.