At Broughton Community Schools, we believe that all our children can become fluent readers and writers. This is why we teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching phonics in Reception and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.

As a result, all our children are able to tackle any unfamiliar words as they read. We also model the application of the alphabetic code through phonics in shared reading and writing, both inside and outside of the phonics lesson and across the curriculum. We have a strong focus on language development and Oracy for our children because we know that speaking and listening are crucial skills for reading and writing in all subjects.

At Broughton Community Schools, we value reading as a crucial life skill. By the time children leave us, they read confidently for meaning and regularly enjoy reading for pleasure. Our readers are equipped with the tools to tackle unfamiliar vocabulary and we encourage our children to see themselves as readers for both pleasure and purpose.

Our curriculum

At Broughton Community Schools we follow the Little Wandle programme overview with our Reception and Year 1 children. The programme overview (see link below) shows the progression of sounds and tricky words that we teach term-by-term. The progression has been organised so that children are taught from the simple to more complex sounds, as well as taking into account the frequency of their occurrence in the most commonly encountered words. All the graphemes taught are practised in words, sentences, and later on, in fully decodable books. Children review and revise sounds and words, daily, weekly and across terms and years, in order to move this knowledge into their long-term memory.

Children need to learn to read as quickly as reasonably possible, so they can move from learning to read, to reading to learn, giving them access to the treasure house of reading. Our expectations of progression are aspirational yet achievable if schools maintain pace, practice and participation by all children. Children who are not keeping up with their peers should be given additional practice immediately through keep-up sessions. Some children may need to continue learning phonics after they've finished Year 1. This often happens in small groups and the lessons are carefully planned for to ensure gaps in children's knowledge are being filled. 

Children in Reception and Year 1 take part in Guided Reading in small groups. They read books that closely match their reading ability based on assessments from the Little Wandle programme. From Year 2 to Year 6 children take part in whole class Guided Reading sessions. During these sessions the class will focus on reading and understanding a text together. 

How can you support your children at home?

The Little Wandle website has a whole section just for parents to equip you with all the tools and knowledge you will need to support your children successfully at home. These webpages include videos that show you how to correctly pronounce the sounds, short videos that show you how we teach the children tricky words and how to blend, information about the books your children bring how and how to support them with reading these, documents that tell you which sounds your children will be taught and in which order, documents that tell you what we say to the children to help them form letters correctly and much more! This is the link for the website: https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/ 

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