At Hook Infant School, we put phonics and reading at the heart of all our learning. We provide daily phonics sessions that are fun and interactive. We currently follow a DfE approved systematic synthetic phonics teaching programme called Anima Phonics, this is used across the school from Year R through to the end of Year 2.
Anima Phonics combines stimulating lessons, vibrant illustrations and engaging classroom materials to provide a simultaneous visual, auditory and kinaesthetic approach to the development of early reading. In Reception, the children work through phases 2, 3 and 5a and in Year One and Two the children focus on phases 5b, 5c and 6. Throughout the scheme children learn rainbow words (also known as tricky or common exception words).
All of the schools reading scheme provides a direct match to the Anima phonics scheme to ensure that all books given to the children are accessible and only covering sounds the children have learnt so far in class. The new scheme is a combination of Anima Phonics and Big Cat books. As the children’s phonics knowledge progresses, we match their understanding with phonics reading books. These recap the sounds learnt at school, providing an extra opportunity for children to solidify their new knowledge.
In addition to Anima supporting our phonics learning, we use the Anima handwriting rhymes to support the children in learning the correct formation of each letter. Please see below for the parent support booklets.