Teaching Early Reading & Writing at Ripple Primary School 

At Ripple, we teach our pupils the essential early reading skills through “Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised”, a comprehensive systematic, synthetic phonics programme validated by the Department for Education.  

We passionately believe that all Ripple pupils have the potential to become confident, fluent, life-long readers and creative, well-structured and purposeful writers, and we believe that Little Wandle is the best way we ensure all of our pupils meet this potential in the early stages of their reading and writing journey.  

Little Wandle is taught in thousands of schools, both in the UK and abroad, and has been identified by Ofsted as a phonics scheme that helps to develop a love of reading, ensure that decodable texts are well-matched to children’s developing phonics knowledge and ensures that early reading is prioritised, amongst other things! 

A 2022 survey of schools who had recently joined the Little Wandle family discovered that over 96% of these schools believed that the programme was having a “significant impact” within the first 6 months of joining. With similar results, 96% of teachers fed back that they found their pupils appeared to enjoy reading more since starting learning through Little Wandle Phonics.