Daily 30 minute phonic lessons are taught following the Little Wandle scheme as part of our teaching of synthetic phonics. The children are taught in year groups although if there are larger gaps they may get some bespoke phonics sessions to allow them to catch up with the rest of the class. 

Letter sounds are taught first and this then builds up to blending these sounds together to achieve the pronunciation of whole words. Synthetic phonics involves decoding or breaking the words into separate phonemes and then blending them together to read a written word.  As each sound is taught, the children are shown how to write the letter.

At the end of Year 1 there is a statutory National Phonics Screening Check where children have to read real and pseudo (fake) words through segmenting, blending and applying their phonics. 

Children in year 2 progress on to using phonics to learn how to spell more accurately by looking at more complex spelling rules and patterns. In addition, Little Wandle provide fluency books for Year 2 which are decodable - children can sound out the majority of the words in these books using their phonics knowledge. 

Children who still need phonics instruction in KS2 or are at risk of not making expected progress are placed on a catch up programme. Children are assessed every 6 weeks or sooner to highlight any gaps in knowledge and so that teachers know how best to develop the children's phonics knowledge.