Phonics and reading

"We're teaching every child to read with Little Wandle Letters & Sounds"

Learning to read is the most important thing your child will learn at school - everything else depends on it. We want every child at Ashmole to love reading. For this reason, we put our efforts into making sure they develop a love of books as well as simply learning to read.

Ashmole follows the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds scheme to teach phonics. Little Wandle is a Systematic Synthetic Phonics programme, which is an approach which teaches children to recognise letters (graphemes) and their associated sounds (phonemes). We put as much energy as we possibly can into making sure that every single child learns to read as quickly as possible. Your child begins learning phonics in Reception in preparation for their Phonics Screening Check in Year 1.

At Ashmole, we aim for pupils to be fluent readers by the end of Year 2. Pupils will follow the Little Wandle Phonics programme until the end of Year 1 and take home books matched to their phonics progression at this time. After children complete the Phonics Screening Check in Year 1, they will move onto the Little Wandle Fluency books. Within these books, there are fifteen levels which your child will move through. All books contain all graphemes, but become longer and contain more multisyllabic words as levels increase. Once your child has completed all Little Wandle fluency levels and their teacher judges they are ready, they will become a Free Reader and take home a chapter book from their classroom book corner.

Alongside their Little Wandle book, children will have the opportunity to bring home a book from the school library each week. All children in KS1 and KS2 visit Durning Library once a term to browse and borrow books.

CLICK HERE to find out more about what reading looks like for each year group. 

CLICK HERE to access some more FAQs on our new Phonics programme at Ashmole.