Why Little Wandle Letters and Sounds?

As part of our whole school drive to raising literacy, we are implementing Little Wandle as our new systematic phonics programme.

Phonics is an approach to teaching some aspects of literacy, by developing pupils’ knowledge and understanding of the relationship between written symbols and sounds. The aim is to systematically teach pupils the relationship between these sounds and the written spelling patterns, or graphemes, which represent them. Phonics emphasises the skills of decoding new words by sounding them out and combining or ‘blending’ the sound-spelling patterns.

We have chosen Little Wandle as it is a responsive programme which has inbuilt extra support for any of our learners who have gaps in their knowledge due to absence or illness, using ongoing assessments and the Keep Up planning. In addition, Little Wandle SEND Programme has a graduated approach to teach children to learn to read in small steps that provide the right amount of challenge. It provides pathways for pupils who may need very specific adaptations to the teaching steps because they have complex needs, and has been developed with the advice from Special schools across the
country.

Effective phonics techniques need to be embedded in a rich literacy environment for early and developing readers and are only one part of a successful literacy strategy. Little Wandle phonics programme supports Pilgrim Pathways School’s encouragement of Reading for Pleasure through its focus on awe and wonder, and resources for ‘Everybody Read’ by Professor Teresa Cremin. It offers support to match children’s secure phonic knowledge to the appropriate decodable reading books, in partnership with HarperCollins.

There are also accessible videos and downloads to support parents to encourage their child’s reading at home.