Here at Cotmanhay Junior School we understand that for children to be able to read fluently they need to be taught an efficient strategy to decode words and understand texts. In order to do this, we use the Little Wandle Rapid Catch-up Programme. This is a comprehensive phonics programme, which is designed to help learners acquire and apply phonics skills if they are not yet fully fluent and confident readers.

If children require phonics intervention, they will follow the Rapid Catch-up Programme and they will have a ‘Reading Practice’ lesson every day. These will include learning GPCs at a faster rate than previously taught in the infants, learning how to spell using these GPCs, learning tricky words and spelling tricky words. Three of their lessons each week will use a book to teach decoding, prosody and comprehension skills.

Each week children will take home:

• A decodable book that children can read fluently and independently.
• A ‘love of reading’ book. Children will not necessarily be able to read this on their own, but this is a book for children to share with someone at home and enjoy it together.

For more information on Little Wandle and the resources used. Please see:

https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/LS-PowerPoint-for-parents-presentation-September-2022.pptx