About this course
Jolly Phonics is a multisensory Synthetic Phonics programme that teaches early learners the skills they need to read and write fluently and quickly, in English language. It is child-centred, scientifically researched, fun and enjoyable by both teachers and children.
Description
It is undeniable that strong literacy skills are needed in all areas of life. This makes it crucial that all children should learn to read and write in their first few years at school. Literacy is a child’s key to a successful future; without the ability to read and write effectively, children often under-achieve in life.
Jolly Phonics is a Synthetic Phonics programme that teaches the English alphabetic code, which shows the relationship between the sounds that can be heard in words and the letter(s) that are used to represent those sounds.
When children read a word, they are decoding: They look at the letters, recognise the sounds each represents, and blend the sounds to hear the word.
When the children write a word, they are encoding: They listen for the sounds in the word and write the letters that represent those sounds.
The five basic skills for reading and writing taught in the Jolly Phonics are:
1. Learning the letter sounds
2. Learning letter formation
3. Blending
4. Identifying sounds in words
5. Spelling the tricky words
Learning the letter sounds
In Jolly Phonics the 42 main sounds of the English language are taught, not just the names of the letters of the alphabet. The sounds are in seven groups. Some sounds are written with two letters, such as ee and or. These are called digraphs. Both oo and th can make two different sounds, as in book and moon, that and three. To distinguish between these two sounds, the digraph is represented in two forms.
Story Telling and Actions
Each sound is taught with an action which helps children remember the letter(s) that represent that sound. As a child becomes more confident, the actions are no longer necessary.
Letter Sounds
At first, children learn each letter by its sound, not its name. For example, the letter ‘a’ is called a (as in ant) not ai (as in aim). Similarly, the letter ‘n’ is n (as in net), not en. This helps in blending the sounds to form words.
Letter Names
The names of each letter will be taught later when the children need to know the names of the letters for their literacy journey.
Order of the Letter Sounds
The letters are not introduced in alphabetical order. The first group (s, a, t, i, p, n) was chosen to be taught first because these sounds make more simple two, three and four-letter words than any other six letters in the English Language.
The letters ‘b’ and‘d’ are introduced in different groups to avoid confusion for the children.
Alternative Sounds
Sounds that have more than one way of being written are initially taught in one form only. For example, the sound ai (rain) is taught first, and then alternatives a-e (gate) and ay (day) follow later.
Learning letter formation
It is very important that a child holds his pencil in the correct way – the ‘tripod grip’.
The grip is the same for both left- and right-handed children. The pencil should be held in the ‘tripod’ grip between the thumb and first finger with the third finger serving as a bed to anchor the pencil. If a child’s hold starts incorrectly, it is very difficult to correct later on.
Blending
Blending is the process of saying the individual sounds in a word and then running them together to make the word. For example, sounding out d-o-g and making dog. It is a technique every child will need to learn, and it improves with practice.
