At Derry Hill School we use Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised to teach phonics and reading. The children begin their phonics journey as soon as they start in reception. We implemented the Little Wandle programme several years ago and it has had a great success rate. 

Phonics is taught every day. The session lasts around 30 minutes, although when the children first start school the session times are shorter. The whole class is taught together. Some children will have extra keep-up sessions, sometimes individually and sometimes in small groups. For more information about our phonics sessions, how phonics is taught and how to correctly say the sounds, please click on the Little Wandle for Parents links below.

Alongside their phonics sessions the children read in small groups three times a week. This will be led by a highly qualified teacher or teaching assistant. The same book will be read each time but each session will focus on three specific skills of reading:

Decoding – sounding out and reading the words and sentences.

Prosody – developing our expression and reading with meaning in our voices.

Comprehension – understanding what has been read.

Your child will bring home their Little Wandle reading book every Friday. This book will be fully decodable and match your child’s phonic ability. They should not struggle or find the book a challenge. Please don’t think that this is then too ‘easy’ for my child – listen to them read with confidence and enjoy their fluency, expression and knowledge of the book. To help foster a love of reading, children will also take a book home that they can share and enjoy with you. This will be a book of their choice from the library. This is known as a sharing book. This book is for you to read to or with your child and enjoy together.

Children in Year Two will continue with Little Wandle books until their fluency and comprehension is at a level that can begin taking home a banded book, that will be carefully matched to their ability. They will continue to read to a highly trained adult once a week.

We work extremely hard at Derry Hill School to ensure that every child leaves our school with a love of reading and we endeavour to instil that love of reading from an early age. These are comments from parents of children in EYFS and Key Stage 1.

“My son has loved reading these books! I have seen loads of progress in his reading.”

“We’ve been really impressed with how well our child has learnt their sounds and embraced reading – she loves her books!”

“His confidence and ability improved so quickly with this reading scheme.”

We hope this information has been useful but if you ever have any questions, please do not hesitate to speak to either your child’s class teacher or myself. Please also find a variety of links below for resources that you may find useful.

Mrs Burr

Phonics and Early Reading Lead

The resources on this page will help you support your child with saying their sounds …