Phonics

Nursery:

• Daily small group phonic sessions (maximum of 4 children)– DfE Letters and Sounds Phase 1
• From the spring term, any children secure in oral blending and segmenting to start Little Wandle Letters and Sounds (LW) – the reception year group plan to be followed (resources to be ordered in the autumn term).
• Provide opportunities throughout the day, every day, to reinforce and practise oral blending and segmenting, eg. “come and s-i-t sit on the m-a-t mat”, ‘you may leave the carpet when I say your name, a-b-d-u-l, f-i-z-a etc.”

Reception and Year 1

• Fidelity to the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds programme.
• All children in reception (regardless of whether they have had LW lessons in nursery) start from the beginning of the reception year group plan.
• A daily discreet 30-minute lesson following LW year group plan.
• ‘Keep up not catch up’ – all children must be included in the daily whole class lesson – magnetic boards and letters may be used by children with limited pencil control – children may work in smaller groups with an additional adult during the ‘practise’ and ‘apply’ section of the daily lesson to practise and apply blending and segmenting of words that are matched to their known PGCs.
• Additional ‘LW Keep Up’ daily sessions for children at risk of falling behind – 10/15 mins.
• A daily ‘1:1 LW Tutoring’ session for the lowest 20% – approximately 5 minutes per child.
• Little Wandle Assessment will replace Phonics Tracker from the autumn term – to be completed half termly and designed to keep track of progress, inform next steps and identify children for ‘LW Keep Up’.
• The LW Placement Assessment will be carried out with children new to school within their first week.
• Guided reading – Little Wandle Big Cat fully decodable reading books matched to children’s current learning in phonics – lessons focus on decoding/prosody/comprehension.
• Home reading – ‘Rocket Phonics’ (Rising Stars) fully decodable books and e-books matched to children’s current learning in phonics (Little Wandle Big Cat e-books to be considered during 2022/23) + a sharing book (a ‘real’ book for parents to share).

Year 2

• Autumn term 1 – all children have a daily LW Letters and Sounds lesson to revisit phases 2, 3, 4 and 5, based on gaps in learning from the summer term assessment – all year 2 classes to follow the same daily timetable (see reception and year 1 above for details).
• Autumn 2 onwards – all children who are not secure with phase 5 to continue with a daily LW Letters and Sounds lesson.
• A daily ‘1:1 LW Tutoring’ session for all children who didn’t reach the Y1 phonics check standard – approximately 5 minutes per child.

Year 3

• All children not yet secure with phase 5 to continue with a daily LW Letters and Sounds lesson to revisit phases 2, 3, 4 and 5, based on gaps in learning from the summer term assessment – delivered as an intervention.

KS2

For those children who still need support in phonics, interventions are provided and delivered by trained support staff.