Our school has chosen Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised as our systematic, synthetic phonics (SSP) programme to teach early reading and spelling.
Your child has learned Phases 2, 3 and 4 in Reception. Now they are in Year 1, they will have a brief review of Phases 3 and 4 and all of the Reception tricky words. By week 4 of the first half term, they will begin phase 5. Phase 5 covers the last remaining graphemes of the Little Wandle progression and alternative pronunciations and spellings of graphemes learned.
In Phase 5 children learn:
•new graphemes for the sounds they already know
•that the same grapheme can have alternative pronunciations.
The ‘Grow the code’ lessons support children with reading and spelling these alternative spellings.
Reading words:
•Most children will now be confident using the strategy ‘blend in your head’ to build their fluency.
•Blending in your head means children say the sounds quietly in their heads and then read the whole word out loud.
•If your child is struggling with a word, encourage them to blend in their head.
•Children are also taught to spot digraphs in words before reading the word as a whole. This also helps their developing fluency.
•Show parents how to spot digraphs in words. Show a word such as ‘head’. Point to ‘ea’ and say: This is a digraph. Model reading the word: h-ea-d head. Show another word e.g. ‘bread’. Ask parents to spot the digraph and read the word: b-r-ea-d bread.
•Eventually, reading becomes automatic and children will be able to read words that they know fluently.
•Fluency is the ultimate goal of phonics teaching and fluent reading is explicitly taught.
Reading at home:
Reading a book and chatting had a positive impact a year later on children’s ability to…
•understand words and sentences
•use a wide range of vocabulary
•develop listening comprehension skills.
The amount of books children were exposed to by age 6 was a positive predictor of their reading ability two years later.
Tricky words:
•Have a look at this video on the website: https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/
•It's important that children practise tricky words regularly to ensure that they can read them automatically.
•Tricky words have unusual spellings. For example ‘all' is tricky to children in Reception because the letter ‘a’ says /or/ in this word.
•Tricky words are taught in a systematic way, following the clearly defined Little Wandle sequence of learning. We teach them because they are common words that children need to know.
•As children 'Grow the code', some tricky words will no longer be tricky. For example, children learn in Year 1 that the letter ‘a’ can make the /or/ sound in words like ‘all’, ‘ball’ and ‘water’’. This means that the word ‘all’ is no longer tricky!
Spelling:
•This year, your child will be taught how to spell words every day using the graphemes they have been taught so far.
•They will practise writing a dictated sentence.
•Handwriting is referred to but is taught at other times of the day.