At Trafalgar, we teach phonics through the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme. This is one of the Department for Education's validated systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programmes.
Phonics is a way of learning to read based on learning to match sounds to a letter or group of letters. This can then be applied in their reading and writing.
Children have daily phonics learning, and we regularly check children's learning to ensure that we identify those who would benefit from extra practise as quickly as possible.
Little Wandle identifies reading as having 3 core strands:
- 'Decoding': Reading the words on the page through application of your phonics knowledge.
- 'Prosody': Reading with 'expression'. This is all about timing, phrasing and use of tone.
- 'Comprehension': Understanding what the words/sentences/paragraphs mean.
To develop these key reading skills in school, we teach using Little Wandle's scheme books matched exactly to their phonics teaching.
Your child will regularly borrow and bring home a Little Wandle scheme book matched to their current phonics learning. This is for your child to read to and with you, and develop these core 3 skills.
We also have regular story times to develop a love for reading for pleasure, and your child will (in addition to their Little Wandle book) regularly borrow and bring home a school library book. This is for you to read to and with your child to explore and enjoy together.
Reading
Reading is intrinsically linked with phonics as reading engagement is not possible if children struggle with the basic mechanics of reading.
Through careful teaching and frequent practice, we enable our children to develop reading fluency and an enjoyment of reading.
At Trafalgar, our pupils ‘bounce into reading’ in a variety of ways, including: daily story time with their classroom adult/teacher, whole-class shared reading time, individual and small-group reading with a classroom adult/teacher, school-library time in our physical library and on our digital library platform, and through sharing books from school with their adult(s) at home.