Phonics is making connections between the sounds (phonemes) of our spoken words and the letters (graphemes) that are used to write them down. Phonics is designed to help teach children to read and spell by teaching them the skills of blending (in reading)  and segmenting (in spelling) using the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read unfamiliar words (decoding) and spell accurately. 

At Southbourne Juniors we use the Little Wandle Rapid Catch Up programme as our government validated systematic synthetic phonics programme for the teaching of reading and writing, which mirrors Southbourne Infants who follow the Little Wandle Letters & Sounds Revised 2021 programme. Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised draws 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, confident, enthused readers; reading for meaning and reading for pleasure.

The Little Wandle Catch Up programme is for those children who have not met age related expectations on entering Southbourne Juniors, taught at a faster pace to allow children to ‘catch up’. After an initial assessment, targeted phonic support with clear progression is taught following the cycle of revisit and review, teach, practise and apply. Children’s progress is monitored frequently and end of unit assessments are used to inform future teaching.

The children are taught to sound out and blend in order to read words, using fully decodable books, this provides children with the confidence to tackle any unfamiliar words as they read. We teach spelling by ensuring the children understand the relationships between letters and the sounds they represent. 

Phonetically irregular words (tricky words) are taught by identifying which part of the word is tricky. We also model the application of the alphabetic code through phonics in shared reading and writing, both inside and outside of the phonics lesson and across the curriculum. By the end of the programme, children should be reading and spelling with increased accuracy, allowing them to fully access the curriculum being taught in class.