At Lostock Hall Primary School we believe every child should be a fluent and confident reader. We have chosen to teach early reading through the systematic synthetic phonics programme, Little Wandle. We believe reading is the key to success and enables children to access the whole curriculum, as once they learn to read they can then read to learn.

What is phonics?

Making connections between the sounds (phonemes) of our spoken words and the letters that are used to write them down (graphemes). Children are taught to decode words effectively through the systematic approach of learning Grapheme Phoneme Correspondences (GPC’s). They are taught to effectively segment and blend sounds to form words.

How do we teach children to read at school?

Nursery

We use Little Wandle to develop their language, phonological awareness and love of stories and rhyme giving them their best possible start to their journey as readers. We build the foundations for children to succeed with phonics in Reception.

Reception and Year 1

Children participate in daily phonics lessons, usually in the morning. They are taught 4 new GPCs per week and have a review lesson on a Friday. Any children who struggle to secure a sound will be given keep up sessions to ensure they do not fall behind.

Year 2

Children in year 2 will also take part in phonics sessions each day, this will be initially recapping learning from phase 5 before moving onto Little Wandle’s new sessions bridging to spelling and then comprehensive spelling lessons.

Reading Practise Sessions

 Children on the programme will complete 3 reading sessions a week. These will be with a trained teacher/teaching assistant. These are carried out in smaller groups and will have a different focus each session. Firstly, children will be decoding (sounding out the words), the second time they work on prosidy (reading with expression) then the third read focuses on comprehension.

How can you support your child at home?

Each week children will bring home their reading book. This is a time for them to read the book to you fluently and a time to celebrate their reading process of the week. Children will also bring home a non decodable sharing book which is to support their love of reading and this is for you to read with your child throughout the week.

Please see below for our Little Wandle supporting documents.

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