At Upton Heath C of E Primary School we are passionate about ensuring all children become confident and enthusiastic readers and writers. As stated in the National Curriculum, a high-quality education in English will teach pupils to speak and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others, and through their reading and listening, others can communicate with them. Through reading in particular, pupils have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually.

We believe that through learning the vital life skill of reading, children’s lives will be enriched and we are dedicated to enabling our children to become lifelong readers. We aim to achieve this through our “Quest Curriculum” and our expectation for all children to become fluent readers and writers. Phonics provides the foundations of fluent reading and writing.

Through phonics, children learn to segment words to support their spelling ability and blend sounds to read words. The teaching of phonics is of high priority and is emphasised as the key route in the early teaching of reading to beginner readers at the start of school.  The phonics programme that we use, Anima Phonics, follows all aspects of the Synthetic Phonics Teaching Principles set out by the IFERI (International Foundation for Effective Reading Instruction) and has been validated by the Department for Education.