Phonics and Early Reading

Our Early Reading Philosophy

Reading unlocks learning across all areas of the curriculum. Given its importance and the joy it can bring, we place great emphasis and urgency on this essential skill from the moment children join us, creating an environment where reading is valued, encouraged, and enjoyed. We wholeheartedly believe that every child should be supported to become a fluent reader, enabling them to access learning throughout their school journey.

Through the teaching and learning of reading, we are committed to providing children with the strategies they need to develop proficient skills in both word recognition and language comprehension, helping them become successful readers. Alongside these processes, we promote an appreciation of how reading a variety of texts, genres, and authors unlocks hidden treasures, allowing joy, imagination, and escapism into new worlds. We believe that reading is a self-extending process: the more children read, the better they become, and the more they enjoy and benefit from their reading experiences.

Foundations for Phonics – Nursery

At Bourton Meadow, children are exposed to a specially designed Foundations for Phonics programme that follows our ‘Little Wandle’ phonics approach. Each day, children are taught how to recognise and say single-letter sounds and to develop their ability to orally blend them, forming short words. This knowledge is shared through engaging listening games and learning opportunities. These lively, ten-minute sessions are designed to help children develop their speech production of sounds, as well as learn the routines and structures of our phonics approach, preparing them for their learning in Reception.

Little Wandle Phonics – Reception and Year One

From Reception until the end of Year One, children follow the Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) programme Little Wandle: Letters and Sounds Revised. This scheme helps develop independent readers by promoting high expectations in reading and ensuring confident decoding practice which, in turn, builds fluency and enables language comprehension.

To ensure that all children become confident readers and writers, we prioritise the teaching of phonics through this systematic and structured programme. We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised scheme to deliver engaging daily phonics lessons, each lasting 30 minutes. Through these lessons, children learn that each letter of the alphabet corresponds to specific sounds, which can combine in various ways to form words. This helps them recognise the full range of sounds and letter combinations they may encounter when reading or writing.

Our teaching follows a carefully sequenced, systematic approach that enables children to build on their prior knowledge and develop essential phonics strategies as they progress through school. By implementing the Little Wandle programme, we empower all children to confidently decode unfamiliar words. These strategies are reinforced during shared reading practice sessions and writing activities, both within phonics lessons and across the broader curriculum.

We place a strong emphasis on developing language skills, recognising that speech, language, and communication are foundational to success in reading and writing across all subjects.

During reading practice sessions, children are matched with books appropriate to their ability, allowing them to see their learning reflected in a text and providing opportunities to apply their phonetic knowledge. These three weekly sessions follow a structured approach: decoding (to build fluency), prosody (teaching strategies for reading with expression and tone), and comprehension (providing opportunities for children to consider and answer questions about how the text develops).