In Reception, Year One and Year Two, the teaching of early reading is primarily taught through daily phonics lessons. At Ankermoor, we follow Little Wandle Letters and Sounds where a high quality systematic synthetic phonics programme is followed and children are taught consistently to use phonics as the route to reading all unknown words. All graphemes that are taught are practised in words, sentences and fully decodable books. For this, we use Collins Big Cats Letters and Sounds books that are decodable and match each letters and sounds phase. Children who are not keeping-up with their peers will be given additional practice immediately through keep-up sessions. For our learners with SEND we follow the Little Wandle's SEND programme. 

Our aim is for the children to learn to read as quickly as reasonably possible, so they can move from learning to read, to reading to learn, giving them the access to the treasure house of reading. 

Why learning to read is so important

• Reading is essential for all subject areas and improves life chances.
• Positive attitudes to reading and choosing to read have academic, social and emotional benefits for children.

How children learn to read

• Phonics is the only route to decoding.
• Learning to say the phonics sounds.
• By blending phonic sounds to read words.
• Increasing the child's fluency in reading sounds, words and books.

Support for Parents

Please follow the link to the ‘Little Wandle For Parents’ website to access the resources page which will help you support your child with saying their sounds and writing their letters. There are also some useful videos so you can see how they are taught at school and feel confident about supporting their reading at home.

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