At Dundonald we are dedicated to the effective teaching of early reading and phonics. They have a high priority within the school and as a result we are continually reflecting on current practice and striving for improvement. As a school, we have reviewed our teaching of reading and phonics in line with the Department for Education's revised core criteria for effective systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) teaching programmes and new process of validated complete systematic synthetic phonics teaching programmes.

We are very excited to share with you a new venture that we are embarking upon as a school. We have invested in a newly released phonics and reading programme called ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised’. This is a comprehensive reading and phonics programme that has been built around the DFE’s update, as well as drawing on the latest research into how children learn best, how to ensure learning stays in children’s long term memory and how best to enable children to apply their learning to become highly competent readers. This term, we have begun the transition over to this new scheme, which we hope will be fully embedded by September 2022.

The use of ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised’ impacts the way that both phonics and reading are taught, particularly in Reception and Year 1 classes. Some children in our current Year 2 classes who, through the pandemic, missed out on many aspects of phonics teaching, are also benefiting from following this new scheme.

Children in Reception and Year 1 continue to have daily phonics lessons following the programme progression and overview and alongside these lessons, each child in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 will take part in three reading practice sessions. We have invested in sets of 120 new early reading books which are fully decodable and entirely match to the phonics scheme. Children will be reading in small groups and will read the same book three times with specially trained adults in school. Each reading session has a specific focus:

• Decoding - use of phonics skills

• Prosody - reading with rhythm, stress and intonation

• Comprehension - demonstrating understanding of the text

Over the rest of the Spring and Summer terms, as we are in a time of transition, we will continue to send home ‘old style’ phonetically decodable Guided Reading books for you to share with your child. In the future, we hope to give all families access to ‘e-books’ that will match those that your child is reading in class.

In the near future we will be providing a recorded parent/carer workshop that will give more detail on the ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised’ programme and how it is being implemented in our school. In the meantime you may wish to access useful information on the parent/carer section of their website.

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

If you have any questions at this time please feel free to use the Google questionnaire below.

https://forms.gle/vxgUbXsi1xbJRyCE8

Thank you for your continued support and we do hope you are as excited as we are to embark upon this new journey!

Mrs Johnstone (Assistant Headteacher Early Years) and Miss Morton (Assistant Headteacher Lower School)

Reading and Phonics Leaders