The seven stages of Little Learners Love Literacy®

Little Learners Love Literacy® is structured in seven stages. Each stage is sequentially taught so that children can learn, practise and apply new skills whilst continuously consolidating their developing skills – working towards mastery.

Learning to read and spell is complex, but the Little Learners Love Literacy® sequence and structure makes teaching reading and spelling as simple as possible, ensuring children get the best possible foundation for future learning. The teaching of the sequence should be brisk, with both reading (decoding) and spelling (encoding) being taught together. A rich oral language environment is important for the approach to be effective and for students to thrive.

Stages 1–4

Children learn ‘the simple code’ - the sounds of the alphabet, reading and spelling consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words.

Stages Plus 4, 5 and 6

Children learn ‘the extended code’ - blending and segmenting adjacent consonants, consonant digraphs, syllabification.

Stage 7

Children learn the vowel code and more morphology: Long vowel phonemes, alternative graphemes, suffixes and associated spelling rules.