Reading and Phonics Teaching at Tenterden Infant School

Reading is an essential, life-long skill which we, at Tenterden Infant School, strongly believe every pupil must develop so that they leave the school as fluent and confident readers who comprehend and discuss a wide range of texts articulately and comprehensively. Encompassing this is for all our pupils to have a love of reading a wide range and variety of books and texts. Reading is a basic right for all children within our school.
Ensuring a strong grasp of Phonics is a pre-requisite to Reading. As a school, we follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic Phonics programme accredited by the DfE. We have absolute fidelity to this approach and this is the Phonics programme we use from entry to the school and throughout the time they need it. We start teaching Phonics in Foundation Stage 1 and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds revised progression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering Phonics to read and spell as they move through school. Throughout the programme, children learn the English alphabetic code along with the letter-sound correspondences at a rapid pace with the help of simple and enjoyable mnemonics. Once the children have grasped the alphabetic code, they continue accessing Little Wandle. However more time is dedicated to further developing their fluency and comprehension skills until they become the fluent and confident readers that we aspire them to become.