At Arbour Vale we intend for all of our children to build the strongest foundations for a lifelong love of reading. We value reading as a tool for wellbeing and as a stimulus for the imagination and understand that, as educators, our role is to embed an appreciation for reading across the curriculum as well as to rigorously teach the fundamentals of comprehension and decoding.  In order to support this we are now using the Anima Phonics programme to support the teaching of Phonics and early reading across the school.

Anima Phonics is a DfE validated phonics programme which supports leading pupils through the different sounds, blending, segmenting and writing of letters and words.  Through an embedded phonics system we aim to build children’s speaking and listening skills as well as to prepare children for learning to read by developing their phonic knowledge and skills.  Anima Phonics is a systematic programme for teaching phonic skills to children with the aim of them becoming fluent readers.

Anima Phonics comes with a wealth of resources for us to use and fun freezes and songs to help pupils recognise and remember each of the different sounds.

Take a further look at some of the songs and activities here https://www.animaphonics.com/phase2-songs.html

However, we know that each of our pupils is different so we may use other strategies to support and embed their learning such as jolly phonics, sight words or mnemonics for writing. At Arbour Vale School, phonics is taught at the pupil’s stage of development across the school so phonics lessons may look different in different classes.