Little Wandle Letters & Sounds Revised Phonics
From November 2021, we introduced a new phonics scheme called Little Wandle Letters & Sounds Revised 2021. It followed the same progression of sounds as our previous scheme but includes fully decodable books.
There is a parents section on the website if you would like to have a look for more detail.
www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/
Phonics teaching
The children are already having daily phonics sessions. Reception will continue with this session but Year 1 will now have 2 sessions per day.
As the children revisit the phase 3 graphemes they will learn a catchphrase to match the sounds. These become even more important when we start learning alternative spellings for the same grapheme.
e.g. ur curl the fur or er a bigger digger
As they learn different spellings they ‘grow the code’ and learn to use grapheme charts to help them choose the right spelling. These will be used later in the year.
The biggest change for our teaching is the way we teach tricky words. The new scheme teaches the children to apply their phonics knowledge to tricky words and explains why the word is tricky.
e.g. is. The i is phonetic but the ‘s’ makes a ‘z’ sound. This is what makes it tricky.
Of. The ‘o’ is phonetic but the ‘f’ makes a ‘v’ sound. This is what makes it tricky. The children are taught which bits of the words are phonetic and which bits are tricky.
The children will have a phonics assessment every 6 weeks.
The scheme also has built in ‘keep up sessions’ to help children that have found something difficult. As we are now not doing the time consuming task of individual home readers we can dedicate our TA time to interventions and keep up work! If your child comes home with a sticker on their arm or jumper with a sound or a tricky then please ask them about it a few times that evening and have to reinforce their learning from that day.
Reading
We are changing how we promote reading.
The children will receive a reading practice book and a sharing book
The reading practice book
We will no longer do individual reading in class. The children will have 3 reading sessions a week with a teacher or TA. Each reading session will focus on different things.
- The children will look through the tricky words and any new vocabulary and have an opportunity to read the book to decode the words.
- In this session they read the book again but the focus is on building expression and intonation.
- In this final session the children will learn to answer questions about the text. They will be asked to prove it and explain it and use examples form the text to help back up their answers.
This is matched to the child’s phonic stage that they can read independently and be fully decodable. It is important that children have plenty of practice reading at home in order to become fluent, confident readers. To ensure that reading at home is an enjoyable experience and does not feel like a chore, your child will be able to read 95% of the words in the books we send home. These books are at the right level for your child to develop fluency and are not ‘too easy’. The children should be able to read the practice book with developing confidence and fluency without any significant help. The parent/carer’s role is to listen with interest and, most importantly, to encourage and praise, enthusiastically acknowledging the child’s achievement (even if, at the early stages, this is only small). After the child has read the book, it may be helpful to talk about the book, but only so far as the child is interested.
The Sharing book
We want children to become lifelong readers, therefore it is essential that they are encouraged to read for pleasure. The desire of wanting to read will help with the skill of reading. To help foster a love of reading, children should take a book home that they can share and enjoy with their parent/carer. Involving the children in the choice of this book is important. These books offer a wealth of opportunities for talking about the pictures and enjoying the story. We want to offer a variety of books, including non-fiction, so they can enjoy a range of writing. Parents/carers need to understand that they should not expect their child to read this book independently and certainly should not try to get their child to do so. The book is for the parent/carer to read to or with the child. Again, it is good to talk about the book with the child, but important not to turn the discussion into a test. The goal is enjoyment.
I know this is a lot of information so if you have any questions then please ask. We offered a google meeting to share this information and to answer any questions.
But if you were unable to make this meeting- here is the powerpoint:
