Our school has chosen Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised as our Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) programme to teach early reading and spelling. 

Why does Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised work?

The answer is simple - Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised reflects the latest evidence-based understanding of how children learn.

Learning to read

Neurological research has identified an area of the brain dedicated to the process of reading which Dehaene calls ‘the letterbox’. This area is not operational from birth; rather, the neurological pathways are established as we learn the connections between letters and sounds. These pathways and activation of ‘the letterbox’ provide the basis for automatic word recognition and fluent reading.

Reading is complex: it is more than just word recognition. Comprehension plays a vital role in reading too. Comprehension starts with our understanding of oral language and develops rapidly on the back of word and sentence reading.

Both of these are strong reasons for children learning to build words from their letter-sound components at an early age, when their brains are at their most plastic. Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised is firmly based on these principles.

How we learn

Dehaene identifies four ‘pillars of learning’; these form the basis of understanding that unites education with neuroscience and leads to the most effective learning.

These four pillars are central to the resources and teaching approach of Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised:

1. Focused attention

Preferably for short periods, regularly and frequently repeated

Short, daily lessons achieve precisely this focus on what needs to be learned, without distraction.

Each lesson gets to the true understanding of the purpose of the learning. Children know that each new sound learned means that they can read more words.

This is immediately demonstrated through reading words and sentences in the lesson, and applied in fully decodable reading books during reading practice sessions.

2. Active engagement

In Little Wandle lessons, active engagement is achieved through the continual expectation of children in chorus and individual oral response. This is immediately followed up by the activity of reading and writing words and sentences to apply new sounds learned as well as to practise previously learned ones.

3. Error feedback

In phonics and in word reading, errors are best countered by a teacher modelling the correct response, encouraging the child to repeat this, and so providing the correction without any negativity.

4. Practice and consolidation

Small items of learning are practised and repeated many times. This is an essential element of committing learning to memory.

Learning is also regularly practised and consolidated through application in reading practice sessions with decodable books, in writing sessions, and with further opportunities encouraged throughout the school day.