At Foxfield Primary School, the journey to becoming a confident, fluent reader begins the moment a child steps into our school community. To achieve this, we have implemented the Little Wandle scheme, a systematic synthetic phonics programme designed to help every child learn to read successfully. At the heart of our approach is a deep commitment to high quality communication and language development, which forms the foundations for all future literacy learning. This rigorous, consistent, and cohesive framework ensures that early reading and phonics are taught with precision, enthusiasm and a profound understanding of how children learn to decode text.

The foundational blocks of the Little Wandle scheme are established early in the nursery setting through the Foundations for Phonics programme. During this initial stage, the pedagogical focus centres heavily on daily oral blending and rich language development, which are brought to life through the intentional use of high-quality stories, traditional rhymes, and interactive word play. 

As children transition into Reception and Year 1, they embark on the formal progression within the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme. In reception and year 1, phonics is consistently delivered through daily twenty-five minute sessions. The progression is carefully paced to build momentum, meaning that by the end of Reception, children will have been taught up to the end of Phase 3. By the end of Year 1, the children secure Phase 5, expanding their repertoire of alternative graphemes and phonemes.
 

At Foxfield, reading is never taught in isolation; instead, it is taught in tandem with phonics to ensure children immediately apply their phonetic knowledge in a meaningful context. Following their daily phonics lesson, children in Reception, Year 1, and Year 2 engage in a separate, daily twenty-five-minute reading session. The books selected for these sessions are entirely decodable and matched to the child’s specific phonetic ability. This enables them to independently practice their newly acquired skills of segmenting (breaking words down into individual sounds) and blending (running those sounds together to read the word). In Reception, these sessions begin almost immediately and for children who are still mastering basic decoding, oral blending remains the central focus.

A distinctive pillar of our early reading philosophy is the mantra of keep up, not catch up. We hold an unwavering belief that every child can and will learn to read, meaning that interventions are immediate rather than reactive. If a child in Reception or Year 1 is identified through daily ongoing assessment as being at risk of falling behind, they receive immediate, targeted support. Daily keep-up sessions, following the exact instructional model of the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme are delivered by a trained adult to plug gaps on the same day. This proactive ethos extends across the school; in Year 2, daily phonics lessons continue to address specific gaps, while for children in key stage 2, there are pre-planned catch-up sessions. 
We send home a fully decodable reading practice book that matches the children’s current phonics level. Each child will have read the book at school during the focused small group sessions, targeting decoding, prosody (intonation and expression) and comprehension. This intentional overlap ensures that home reading is fluent and automatic for all children.