At Bungay Primary School, we believe that all of our children can become fluent readers and writers and we are committed to ensuring that this is achieved for all of our children regardless of any barriers that they may have to their learning. This is why we have chosen to adopt 'Little Wandle Letters and Sounds' as our systematic synthetic phonics programme.

The Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme begins in the earliest years with the 'Foundations for Phonics' programme, delivered to our Nursery children. This ensures that our children are well prepared to begin to learn grapheme-phoneme correspondences and blending to read in Reception and Year 1, where they will follow the 'Little Wandle Letters and Sounds' which is designed to ensure that all children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.

At Bungay Primary School, we understand that being able to read is the most crucial skill that we can teach our children as without it they will find it increasingly difficult to access other areas of the curriculum and their life chances will be significantly reduced. The Little Wandle Letters and Sounds programme is designed to ensure that no child is left behind and where teachers think that this may be the case, children will be supported with Little Wandle’s daily keep up or catch up in Reception and Year 1, or Rapid Catch up in Year 2 and Key Stage 2. This runs alongside our strong focus on language and vocabulary development in all year groups, as we know that speaking and listening are crucial skills for reading and writing in all subjects.

A consistent approach

Little Wandle is the only scheme used throughout school as we know that a consistent approach lowers cognitive load and gives our children the best chance of success. Every adult at Bungay Primary School is trained to deliver Little Wandle phonics and reading to ensure that phonics and reading are delivered in the same way in every year group and by every adult. This includes all adults using the same language, the same routines and the same resources. 

By the end of Year 1 children will have been taught all of the phonemes/graphemes from Phase 2,3,(4 no new sounds) and 5, in preparation for the Year 1 Government Screening. Supportive details can be found here and below:

The Little Wandle website provides a wealth of support for Parents/Carers at home and can be found here. 

They also have a YouTube channel which you can find here.

Presentation from our recent Phonics themed coffee morning:

If you have any questions or queries regarding Phonics, please speak to our Phonics lead, Mrs McGrotty, who would be delighted to hear from you.