At Ganneys Meadow we know that phonological development starts before birth. Our total communication approach ensures that all children can access opportunities to develop their phonological awareness from their individual stage of development. Our Early Phonological Development Programme, created by Dr Helen Bibby, is tailored to ensure that adults can plan and provide opportunities to allow children to feel, move, hear, look and listen to sounds, rhythm and rhyme.
When children are ready, they are introduced to the Little Wandle Foundations programme. This programme provides the children with pre- phonics activities which continue to develop their phonological awareness and sound discrimination skills. We provide a balance of child-led and adult-led experiences for all children that meet the curriculum expectations for ‘Communication and language’ and ‘Literacy’. These include:
- sharing high-quality stories and poems
- learning a range of nursery rhymes and action rhymes
- activities that develop focused listening and attention, including oral blending
- attention to high-quality language.
The children in the Reception Resourced Provision Bases are introduced to Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised Programme when they are ready to begin this. At this stage, the children will access short phonics sessions each day where the focus will be on learning to say and read single sounds and begin to blend these sounds together to read words. They will start reading wordless books and, when they can blend sounds into words, will read Phase 2 books.
At Ganneys Meadow, we understand that good communication and language underpins all areas of the curriculum. We ensure that children’s learning environments are language-rich and a love of reading is embedded in the curriculum.
