Introducing Little Wandle           

At the beginning of November, Leyland Methodist Schools adopted a brand new systematic synthetic phonics scheme called Little Wandle (Letters and Sounds Revised). This programme is designed to help our children to master the skills of reading and spelling in their early reading years. The programme begins in EYFS and guides the children through the early stages of sound discrimination, rhythm and rhyme, alliteration and oral blending and segmenting.

Once they are ready, children move onto letter recognition, learning and practising the skills needed to blend graphemes for reading and segment for spelling. 

As the programme progresses, there is also an emphasis on reading and spelling ‘tricky' words and polysyllabic words.

We have a comprehensive reading scheme in school that runs alongside the teaching of phonics. The Big Cat Phonics books (which are matched to Little Wandle) offer a chance for children to practice their decoding skills regularly throughout a series of fun, exciting and phonetically decodable titles.

Working Environments

We ensure all classrooms within school promote a love of reading. All classes have a phonics working wall to display the sounds children are learning each week and the tricky words that the children are focusing on. They also display how each grapheme should be formed in line with our handwriting policy, to support children with their handwriting. Within each classroom, there is a ‘Grow the Code Grapheme Mat’ which shows how each phoneme can be represented by different graphemes.

Reading Practice Sessions

Following the Little Wandle guidance, we ensure that all children working at or below Phase 5 in the phonics scheme, will have regular opportunities to apply the phonics they have learned to reading fully decodable books. These REGULAR reading practice sessions will take place three times each week.

Each reading practice session has a clear focus, so that the demands of the session do not overload the children’s working memory. The reading practice sessions have been designed to focus on three key reading skills:

• Decoding

• Prosody – reading with meaning, stress and intonation

• Comprehension – understanding the text

Developing Home Reading

We would like to make you aware that arrangements for Home Reading will look different from January 2022.

At Leyland Methodist Schools, we value the role that parents play in supporting their child to become fluent, confident readers. We believe that building relationships between home and school to support your child’s reading journey is fundamental.

With this in mind, we have produced guidance to maximise the impact of reading with your child at home. This guidance outlines how to use the three books your child will be bringing home from school.

Ebook - Reading Practice book

This is the book your child has already read three times in their reading practice sessions in school. This book is matched to their phonic stage and will be fully decodable. Therefore, they should be able to read this book confidently with 95% fluency without any help from an adult. If they are able to do this, the book is well matched and not too easy.

Your role is to listen with interest and, most importantly, to encourage and praise, enthusiastically acknowledging your 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. Keep the experience positive and avoid turning it into a test.

A Parent Guide containing the relevant information on how to access the ebook will be provided by your child’s phonics teacher.

Home Reader Book

This book will be matched to your child’s phonic ability and it will contain the sounds they have already learned in their phonic sessions. This will be an unseen book, therefore, it will require a greater level of support from parents.

Refer to the inside cover of the book for guidance on what sounds and words to focus on. The book may also give you ‘Top Tips’ on how to read the book together to maximise the impact of reading together.

Shared Reader - Reading for Pleasure

At Leyland Methodist Schools, we aspire to promote a generation of lifelong readers.

In order to accomplish this, the children should be able to choose a book which interests and inspires them, which they can then share with you at home.

With this in mind, each class has a timetabled slot every week within our new library. During this time, your child can browse the shelves and choose a books which fires their imagination.

They may not be able to read this book independently, however, the goal is to enjoy sharing the book with you.

Keeping in touch 

Regular Reading Updates

As this is the start of a new and exciting adventure for Leyland Methodist Schools, we would like to keep you updated every page of the way.

Therefore, look out for updates on the new reading page of the website and DOJO.

We will be hosting a fun phonics session for parents in Spring 1 to give you more information about the Little Wandle Scheme. Additional help and guidance for reading at home will follow.

Date: Tuesday 26th January 2022 – 6PM

Parental access to the Website 

We believe supporting parents to help their children to read at home is imperative. Therefore, we encourage you to access the 'Parent' section on the Little Wandle Website.

You can access the following:

- Videos on how to pronounce sounds in Phonics 

- Videos on how we teach your child specific aspects of phonics in class

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