The old book banding system is organised by criteria matched to the 3 cueing method not to phonics and is pretty meaningless.

The SEND Programme isn’t additional practice for those children who are falling slightly behind their peers. Big Cat Little wandle books are linked directly to the phonics progression of sounds and tricky words taught. All children no matter their attainment level are included in the lessons and we use ‘Keep Up’ interventions to make sure no child falls behind.See what’s included in our Use in class resources for handwriting and all aspects of the phonics lessons.

Our Little Wandle SEND Programme has been developed to be used with the graduated approach to teach children to learn to read in small steps that provide the right amount of challenge. This could be by showing pictures or objects with the sound in and getting the children to guess or find the sound. As well as a presentation of the key features of the programme we also allow plenty of time for questions during these hour-long sessions. The 32 Phase 3 Big Cat books match perfectly to the Little Wandle progression and support all the Letters and Sounds / Tricky words and words children meet in this phase.

We timetable daily phonics lessons for any child in Year 2 and above who is not fully fluent at reading or has not passed the Phonics screening check. This could be done by using pictures, missing words in sentences, fill in the missing sounds, make words with the sound using letters displayed.

Unfortunately we do not have capacity to offer 1:1 briefings with individual schools and our information briefings are not recorded. Teachers will use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments and matching grids to ensure that children are given a book that is fully decodable in line with their secure phonic knowledge. By the end of the Autumn Term, we aim for all children to be able to blend to read words with Phase 2 sounds.

Weekly content grids, lesson templates and ‘How to’ videos all help to ensure that all adults maintain consistency in their teaching and this is monitored half termly by the Reading Leader and SLT so that any misconceptions or inconsistencies can be rectified as soon as possible. This will be taught in a fun multisensory way and may well involve: writing sounds/ words, songs, actions, pictures, puppets, writing giant letters in the air, using different voices, moving around the room, treasure hunts. The SEND Programme is not additional practice for those children who are falling slightly behind their peers. This ensures that our children are well prepared to begin to learn grapheme-phoneme correspondences and blending to read in Reception and Year 1, where they will follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression which is designed to ensure that all children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school. Small group reading provides children with an opportunity to practice and apply what they have learnt in phonics.

Where children pronounce the phonemes incorrectly or use letter names, they will not be able to successfully blend to read words.

Using Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised with SpLd children will be more about what exact conditions a school is working with.