We are writing to inform you about our new phonics and early reading program that we will introduce after February half term and how you can support it at home. We are very excited about this change for our school to ensure our children’s reading becomes even better than it currently is. In order to maximise the opportunities for all our EYFS and Year 1 children we have purchased beautiful new resources for teaching phonics, received training for the whole school staff and purchased hundreds of brand new books!

Phonics Programme

Our school has chosen to move over to Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised as our systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programme to teach early reading and spelling. Little Wandle is a complete teaching programme, which is fully resourced and sets expectations of progression that are aspirational yet achievable.

We will work through the entire Little Wandle Programme until your child can successfully use their phonic knowledge and blending skills to read fluently. Children need to learn to read as quickly as reasonably possible, so they can move from learning to read, to reading to learn, giving them access to the treasure house of reading.

What’s happening in school?

Phonics in Nursery

In our Nursery we prepare our children by teaching them the foundations of phonics. We use engaging games to teach oral blending and phonemic awareness. We support language development and a love of books through: sharing high-quality stories and poems, learning a range of nursery rhymes and action rhymes, activities that develop focused listening and attention and pay attention to high-quality language with children.

Phonics in Reception, Year 1 and beyond

As usual, children in Reception and Year 1 will continue to have daily phonics lessons. They will be taught 4 new grapheme phoneme correspondences (GPCs) per week, plus a review lesson on a Friday. Knowing a GPC means being able to match a phoneme (sound) to a grapheme (written representation) and vice versa.

The children will also learn a series of ‘tricky words’. Tricky words are those words which cannot be sounded out using their phonemes. We will build into the timetable some weeks for the children to consolidate what has been taught so far. We assess your child every six weeks to check progress. Any child who needs extra support will have keep-up sessions planned for them.

Some Year 2 children and Key Stage 2 children need extra support on their phonics journey and will be using the Little Wandle resources, including Little Wandle Rapid. 

Reading practice

Children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 will also take part in Reading Practice Sessions. We will be using our gorgeous brand new books published by HarperCollins for Little Wandle. In the Reading Practice sessions throughout the week, we work on decoding (sounding out the words), prosody (reading with expression) and then look at comprehension (understanding what the book is about).  We will be developing reading fluency.  The more our children see the words and practice, the more they begin to read them automatically without having to sound them out. 

The book will then be sent home the following week for you to share and continue this practice.  By then, the children should be reading 95% of the book fluently with ease.  The children will also continue to bring home a ‘reading for pleasure’ book for you to read and share with your child.

Supporting phonics at home

We will be sending a phonics meeting date for parents and further information about how you can support your child’s reading journey shortly – it is really important you work with us on this as it is essential we have your help. 

The Little Wandle website is amazing, and you will be able to watch videos made for parents so you are saying the right sounds – forming and pronouncing them correctly.  Take a look at;

https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/

We are very excited about this lovely new scheme and look forward to you joining us in helping your children read.

Parent and Teacher Consultations have been organised for Nursery, Reception and Year 1 to Year 6 on Wednesday 29^th and Thursday 30^th January (3.30 – 6.30pm), apart from a few changes to Nursery:

• Nursery will be on Wednesday 29^th January only (3.20-6.30pm). Each appointment will be a 10-minute slot. Please note, the booking system will show 5-minute slots due to both Mrs Bennett and Mrs Waters leading these appointments.

We will be using the online booking system again for booking appointments. You will shortly receive an email inviting you to book an appointment with your child’s class teacher. Once you have received the email, please select the date and time you wish to book for. Only available time slots will be displayed. Once you have selected your time and confirmed your booking, you will receive an on-screen reminder of the booking followed by an email confirmation.

Please note, the system will only send an email to the person who is listed on our records as contact number one. Parents who have more than one child at our school, will receive a separate email for each child. If you have not received an email by Friday 17^th January, please contact the school office by phone (01724 867065) or email (admin.berkeleyprimary@northlincs.gov.uk) to ensure we have your current email address. The online booking system will close on Monday 27^th January at 6.00pm.

Parent’s Evening is an opportunity for you to have a look at your child’s work and speak to your child’s class teacher about progress and targets.  I will also be available during the evening if you would like to speak to me.  We expect 100% attendance and need to see all parents.  There will be no after school clubs on Wednesday 29^th & Thursday 30^th January.

Meetings will be held in classrooms, there will be a waiting area in each school hall and you will be able to look at your child’s work.  Please could all visitors use the main entrance for the infants and juniors and come to the appropriate building for each appointment. Nursery and Reception meetings will be held in the main infant building.

We look forward to seeing you here at the school, having an opportunity to share some of the lovely work the children have been doing and discuss their progress and attitude to learning.

We have been organising our extra curricular activities for this term. We are offering a variety of enrichment activities for the children, trying to cater for a range of interests and age groups. I am sure that you will join me in thanking our great team for giving up their own time to volunteer to run these clubs for our children. The list of clubs available this term are on the reverse of this letter.

If your child would like to join a club then please log on to your ParentPay account where the clubs available for this term will be listed for you to select. To make this process fair you MUST ONLY select ONE club for your child. If you select more than one your child will be cancelled from all clubs selected.

Booking opens from Monday 13^th January at 4.00pm where you will then be able to view and book your child onto a club. As there are limited places at each club, places will be allocated on a first come first served basis. If a club is full then the ParentPay system will not let you book onto a club. If you have yet to use ParentPay and need your login details, then please call in at the school office.

Clubs (apart from Judo) will start from Monday 20^th January and will run until Friday 28^th March. If your child is attending an ‘invitees only’ club then please refer to your letter for exact running dates for that club. Please note, there will be no clubs running on Wednesday 29^th & Thursday 30^th January due to Parent’s Evening.

The Judo Club will not start until after February Half Term due to the Gooch Judo Coach, Tina being away. Judo will start on Thursday 27^th Feb. The club will continue to run on Thursdays in the Junior Hall at a charge of £3.00 per week.  There will also be a charge for some of the other clubs that support staff run, as we need to cover the cost of their extra working hours. Please see the reverse of the letter for the cost per term for each club. Payment for the full term must be made via ParentPay at the point of booking. Please note, once payment is made, this is non-refundable so should your child be absent from school or no longer wants to go to the club, we are unable to refund this back.

Once a child has signed up for a session, we do ask that children stay committed to their activity for a term and attend each week.  If for any reason they are not able to attend, please can you ensure the school office is made aware.

As always, Infant children will need to be collected at the end of their after school activity. We recommend that Junior children are also picked up from their activity, but this is parental choice. Please indicate whether your Junior child will be collected or allowed to walk home on the ParentPay system when booking onto a club. Please ensure you are punctual when collecting your child at the end of the club.  Should you be late on more than one occasion then your child will unfortunately not be able to attend the club.

Infant Hall

Junior Hall