At Dubai Heights Academy, early reading is a key strategic focus and a strong, well-embedded element of our Primary provision. We believe that developing confident, fluent readers from the very start is fundamental to academic success across the curriculum and to fostering a lifelong love of reading.

A Strong Foundation Through High-Quality Phonics

Phonics and Early Reading are taught through the Read Write Inc. programme, a highly effective, systematic synthetic phonics approach developed by Ruth Miskin. This structured programme ensures that all children, from the age of four, are taught the essential skills they need to read, write and spell with confidence.

Children learn to:

• Recognise and articulate the sounds (phonemes) of English
• Blend sounds to read words accurately
• Segment sounds to support spelling and writing

Daily, well-paced phonics lessons are carefully planned and consistently delivered, using fully decodable reading books that closely match each child's phonics knowledge. This approach ensures rapid progress, builds confidence, and supports children in becoming fluent, expressive readers and increasingly independent writers.

Language-Rich Classrooms and Reading for Pleasure

Our Early Years and Primary classrooms are language-rich environments, carefully designed to immerse children in high-quality spoken language and literature. Alongside phonics instruction, children are exposed to a wide range of rich reading and picture books that develop vocabulary, comprehension, imagination and a deep enjoyment of stories.

Well-resourced reading areas, engaging texts and purposeful talk are central to daily classroom practice, ensuring that reading is both meaningful and motivating.

Students are exposed to challenging vocabulary across the whole curriculum to develop strong language acquisition, deepen conceptual understanding and promote high-quality thinking and communication. Ambitious vocabulary is taught explicitly to ensure consistency, equity and progression, enabling students to access complex texts, articulate ideas with precision and engage effectively in reasoning and problem-solving.

Parental Partnership and Support

We recognise that strong outcomes in early reading are best achieved through close partnership with parents. Throughout the academic year, we offer:

• Parental Phonics Information Workshops to explain how phonics is taught and how parents can support learning at home
• Stay and Learn sessions, allowing parents to observe phonics teaching in the classroom and gain confidence in supporting correct pronunciation and blending

These opportunities ensure a shared understanding and consistent approach between school and home.

A Whole-School Culture of Reading

Dubai Heights Academy is proud to work in partnership with the Emirates Literature Foundation, enriching our whole-school reading culture and strengthening our commitment to literacy. This partnership enhances opportunities for author engagement, reading events and initiatives that inspire children to see reading as enjoyable, meaningful and empowering.

Through high-quality teaching, excellent resources, strong parental engagement and enriching external partnerships, Dubai Heights Academy promotes a culture where reading is valued, celebrated and embedded across the school community.