26 years ago when I landed in my mother's grade 1 class she taught everyone to read using, you guessed it, phonics.

And it was (very much) not a new-fangled approach back then. It, in fact, dates back in the English-speaking world to when spelling first began to be standardized in English. In other languages it goes back further and is more popular. For instance nobody would even think of using another method of teaching spelling in German.

To get an idea of the true age of the use of phonetic techniques for spelling, the word dates back to the Phoenicians to whom credit goes for the idea of having an alphabet with letters corresponding to sounds to use for writing. You might remember the Phoenicians, they were the people that the Romans later destroyed in the Punic wars (eventually razing Carthage to the ground and ploughing it with salt so that nothing would grow back).

Cheers,
Ben

PS I grew up with hearing my mother rant about the stupid "whole word" movement. She thought the fact that she took the bottom grade 1 class, and routinely got them reading at a grade 4-6 level by the time they left should speak volumes enough about the effectiveness of her techniques...