Early Reading and Phonics

At Leek First School, the early development of our youngest children’s literacy skills provides a strong foundation for their future learning and progress.

To enable our children to become fluent readers and writers, we teach early reading & phonics through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised Synthetic Phonics Programme (SSP).  We start teaching phonics in Reception and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression.

As part of the Little Wandle SSP, the children take part in 3 group guided reading sessions each week, each one focusing on three key reading skills:

• decoding
• prosody: teaching children to read with understanding and expression
• comprehension: teaching children to understand the text.

To develop an early love of books, the children are also exposed to a rich variety of books that they can read both at school and at home.