Home - Seamless English Learning Starts Here! The Magic of Harrow Shenzhen’s Phonics Teaching

Seamless English Learning Starts Here! The Magic of Harrow Shenzhen’s Phonics Teaching

“We were worried at first that our child might struggle learning to read English as this is their second language. But after just one term of phonics lessons, she has already started to read words!” — A Harrow Shenzhen Early Years parent

At Harrow Shenzhen, children don’t just 

learn English — they fall in love with it. 

Through the world-renowned phonics teaching, 

our young learners have made 

remarkable progress, turning early curiosity 

into confident communication.

Laying the Foundations for 

Reading: Phonemic Awareness, 

Vocabulary, and Listening

Before children can learn to read, they must first develop phonemic awareness—the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words.

In the Early Years Centre, children engage in listening walks, where they are encouraged to notice and name the sounds they hear both indoors and outdoors. These experiences help children tune into the world around them and begin to understand that sounds can be isolated, identified, and eventually linked to spoken words.

Pre-Nursery (2–3 Years): 

Sound Play and Language Exploration

🔹In Pre-Nursery, our youngest Little Lions are just beginning to explore language. Phonemic awareness is developed through playful, sensory-rich experiences such as:

Singing nursery rhymes and action songs
Sound play using musical instruments, animal noises
Storytime with picture books, where adults emphasise key sounds and repeat simple words
Imitating environmental sounds, such as pretending to be a car, a dog, or the wind

 

For children learning English as an additional language, these activities also serve as a gateway to vocabulary development. Teachers support this by using gestures, visuals, and real objects to reinforce word meanings, and by repeating key words in meaningful contexts.

 

Nursery (3–4 Years): Developing 

Sound Awareness and Vocabulary

🔹As children’s language skills grow, phonemic awareness activities become more focused.

Play rhyming games, and Clap out syllables
Identify initial sounds in familiar words
Blend and segment sounds orally
Introduce thematic vocabulary through stories, songs, and role play (e.g., animals, food, family)
Use visual supports like flashcards, puppets, and picture books
Encourage expressive language through open-ended questions and imaginative play

At Harrow Shenzhen Qianhai’s Early Years Centre, phonemic awareness, vocabulary development, and environmental listening are woven into every part of the day.

These early experiences directly prepare children for our Read Write Inc. phonics programme. By already understanding how sounds work in language, children quickly grasp letter-sound relationships, becoming confident readers and writers.

A Proven Oxford Approach: 

Unlocking English for

 Non-Native Speakers

Developed by Oxford University Press, Read Write Inc. is a structured phonics programme that helps children — especially those learning English as an additional language — build strong foundations in reading, comprehension, vocabulary, and spelling.

Read Write Inc.

With RWI, children learn to decode words through phoneme (sound) recognition and blending — enabling them to “crack the code” of reading rather than rely only on memorisation. This means that by the end of Key Stage One, they are reading more fluently—and fluency supports comprehension, one of the main aims of Harrow’s English programme.

🔹The results speak for themselves:

100% of our current Reception cohort are currently working above the expected standard for this point in the year. We are excited to see what this looks like in June!
Our Year One and Two students are making excellent progress. Some students who are new to phonics are moving with rapid speed, progressing through five levels (groups) in just three months. This is the equivalent of nearly one year’s progress in twelve short weeks.