At Sunmarke School, our aim is simple: to give every child the skills to become a confident, fluent reader while developing a genuine love of books. We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised approach, providing a clear, systematic journey from learning individual sounds to reading with increasing fluency, expression and understanding.
Phonics helps children make connections between the sounds in spoken words and the letters used to represent those sounds in writing. Children learn the language of phonics, including phoneme (a sound), grapheme (the letter or letters representing a sound), digraph (two letters making one sound) and trigraph (three letters making one sound). They are explicitly taught how to blend sounds together to read words and segment words into individual sounds for spelling.
A systematic approach
Phonics is taught regularly and follows the carefully sequenced Little Wandle progression. Children build their knowledge gradually, regularly revisiting previously taught sounds and tricky words before applying new learning. For example, during Phase 3, children develop their knowledge of vowel digraphs and trigraphs and learn to apply these when reading increasingly complex words.
As children progress, they are taught strategies such as spotting digraphs and trigraphs before blending and chunking longer words into manageable parts. Phonics also supports writing: children practise segmenting words for spelling and applying the graphemes they have learned when writing words and dictated sentences.
Developing reading at home
Reading practice is an essential part of our approach. Children read carefully selected decodable books matched to the phonics knowledge they have securely learned. Little Wandle emphasises that books should allow children to experience success rather than continually encounter sounds they have not yet been taught.
In school, reading practice develops three important skills: decoding, using phonics to work out words; prosody, reading with appropriate expression and phrasing; and comprehension, understanding and discussing what has been read. Repeated encounters with words also help children move from sounding them out to recognising them automatically, building fluency.
Reading at home
Each week, children take home three important items: a guided/phonics reading book, their Reading Record and a book of choice.
The phonics book is deliberately matched to the child’s current reading level and should therefore feel achievable. Parents can listen, encourage fluent rereading and talk about the story. If a child can already read their book fluently, this is something to celebrate rather than a sign that the book is too easy; they can focus instead on expression and comprehension.
The book of choice has a different purpose. It is about developing the child’s love and will to read. It may contain language beyond their independent reading level, so families are encouraged to share it together, use different voices, discuss unfamiliar vocabulary, make predictions and simply enjoy the story.
Our Reading Record provides an important link between home and school, allowing families to celebrate progress and share observations about their child’s reading.
Ultimately, phonics teaches children how to unlock the words on the page, while sharing rich and exciting books helps them understand why reading is so worthwhile. At Sunmarke, we value both equally: developing skilled readers who can read, understand what they read and, most importantly, want to read.
