Teaching Jolly Phonics

[Marie Ota]

AsJolly phonics is a child-centered approach, it has proven to be the most successful method of teaching literacy all around the globe. So it is no surprise most parents are moving to enroll their children in a jolly phonics program.

There are 42 sounds in jolly phonics that are made of 26 letters and digraphs. Digraphs are two letters that are read together because they make one sound. These 42 sounds are learnt using a story and an action. These 42 sounds are taught in 7 groups, which are grouped in a way that children can learn to form words as quickly as possible.

Blending is the process of saying the individual sounds separately and then blending or running them together for a single word. They are also taught blending with Digraphs for more complex words.

Blending in Jolly phonics

These words are words that can not be segmented and blended. Children use whole word recognition for these words because these words have some irregular phonetics knowledge that children are not aware of.

Phase one of Phonics starts with listening, vocabulary, and speaking skills. In this children explore and identify the sounds around them. In this phase, a lot of vocabulary games are introduced along with Rhyming and action songs. The trainers in this stage start segmenting and blending the words for the child to get used to the idea.

In this stage, they also learn how to segment, blend and put together different sounds to form a word. They are also introduced to non-decodable words/ tricky (words that you can not sound out phonetically) like I, Go, and No.

In this stage, the children are encouraged to segment and blend more complex and longer words. They are also introduced to spelling the words (mostly phonetically) and more Tricky Words are introduced.

If you are a phonics trainer who wants to learn teaching with Jolly Phonics, you might already know many things, but since jolly phonics is a child-centric method of teaching, it has to be made fun for children.

Just joined and just read listing re. JP. Been teaching Reception for two years. Was told 'we use Letterland' by initail co-teacher who left after 1 term. Replacement used a mixed bag of ideas but was swaying towards Jolly Phonics. I've continued with Letterland as find the children really enjoy it. We do 1 sound a week from Sept to half term as some morning only and then 2 sounds a week through to Jan. I recap weekly as a mental starter and we do actions for all the characters and they're sounds e.g. like walking like a duck, waddling whilst saying, d, d, d.

The children seem to really like it and it certainly helps them learn their sounds and how to write the letters. Even the ones who are already good at alphabet & have started emergent writing, enjoy the story telling side of it. We don't do copious worksheets or any videos but we do do singing and talking about the characters and their sounds. I watched a couple of the Jp video's and found them very slow and dull 9yes, I know it's not meant for my age!)

I used Letterland in my last job about 5 years ago and on the one hand I thought it was great. The problem was that it was not carried when children left the nursery. Some of the later stages (like the quarrelsome queen never goes anywhere without uppy umbrella) intrigued me and I would have liked to get to know more. From what I recall it was very well thought through by whoever created it! there is no doubt the children loved the songs and actions ( I had a soft spot for poor peter!!) but almost to the extent they got carried away - we had all the story books for each letter and the children adored the 'M' character, was it monster munching mike?! but it got to the stage they just liked the stories in the same way as they liked any other. To a degree they recognised letters but they always said "it's annie apple" if shown an 'a' and then it was what sound does annie apple make and sometimes they would say 'a'. I remember a child looking at the word dog and saying "dippy duck, oscar orange and golden girl!" Where I work now we dont use either and I have seen children progess just as well, and in some cases better than with Letterland. I think alot of Letterland depends on how it is delivered and maybe in my last job we never got it quite right! I certainly thought I would miss it but I dont. It would be interesting to see others points of view.

Hi, our primary has just started to use THRASS. Not sure what it's all about yet because it does really start till September. It's phonics still but it's from Australia I think. They stopped using Letterland about 2-3 years ago, apparently when asked the sound Bouncy Ben made some children said Boing. School didnt like it.

I agree that while letterland has good stories to keep chidlren occupied, they begin to associated the shape with the name of the character and not the sound. This is sometimes a barrier to them learing the sound aeffectively bec you have a group of chidlren shouting annie apple when you trying to get them to make the sound of ]a] (for example) While most chidlren are able to make the transition, some find it particulalry hard to leave the letterland name behind. I prefer to use jolly phonics action and sounds but with the Progression in phonics thrown in for good measure.

I encouraged the take up of Jolly Phonics in my school, after a new teacher who liked it joined us and showed us what she was doing. The children have consistently responded well and if the programme is followed exactly will exceed NLS expectations. PiPs can be used to consolidate but JP can and does stand alone.

In our preschool we used Letterland for several years and the children enjoyed it, particularly singing all the songs, but in time we noticed that many of the children found it very difficult to make the transition to using sounds only and not the Letterland name. We now use Jolly Phonics and the children learn the actions and sounds very quickly and the older children make excellent progress in identifying initial sounds of words and sounding out simple 3 letter words.We don't use the worksheets as they are boring but the children do enjoy the videos.

We started using a synthetic phonics scheme in our school called 'Salley', this was especially devised for chn. in our borough to improve our very poor results. We have used it this year with JP actions and will continue with JP in Reception.

i used letterland with my children and transfered it to my nursery but have now found that most of our children move up to the local school who use jolly phonics...so have just bought all the books and will change in sept.....

I tried a bit of letterland many years ago and I too found that children couldn't get past the annie apple stage and move onto simple sounds. I do JP now and it has worked well. I sing the Jolly Jingles songs, we have the puppets and the video (good content in video but very amateurish).

However I am still a strong believer in what ever works with your children stick with it. I had a dyspraxic and dyslexic child who suddenly clicked when taken off the reading scheme and introduced to Letterland!

I've been using Jolly Phonics for about 5 years now. I love it and much prefer it to Letterland as the children are so much more involved. We do a sound a day and use the letter practice sheets with the children who are up to it. The others get lots of gross motor skills work first.

Last year I was told not to do the phoneme blends - ai, ar, oi etc as it was NLS Yr 1 work (I wasn't happy!). I went along with it and the children were nowhere near as confident in their writing as they'd been in previous years. So despite not being given permission to go back to doing it this year, I did! And again the results have been brilliant. OK, some of them don't remember all of them but they do remember some - oo and ee are always favourites!

The only thing I would say against the much quicker approach is that handwriting has suffered a little. When the children used to do a letter a week they would practise the formation every day and consequently their handwriting was very good. I haven't yet worked out a good way to organise wothwhile letter formation practice - ideas welcome!

had this conversation somewhere else in the forum (its always a bone of contention for Reception teachers I think!) but I basically think that its whatever suits the school. I also felt I had to wean some children off LL and our management introduced JP. Our Nursery teacher hates its and i'm in two minds. I think its good for the phoneme side of teaching letters but not the grapheme. Our chn are now much poorer at handwriting as LL was great at teaching formation. Maybe the people who have found real success with JP have got more resorces than us? We have 2 puppets, the book and posters (wasn't impressed with video so muchand the pack we got with it was for teaching parents-we'd need an extra pair of hands to help with that) the photocopiables are great for Reception-i've adapted them by using the pictures to do CVC cut and stick activities and send the sheets as homework but the resources we have for nursery aren't much to speak of. Don't you find that the posters are confusing? p is for 'party' but some of my chn still look at the balloons and the cake and think it might be for b or c.. How does jolly phonics teach writing ? I undersatnd that they accociate each letter sound with an action (ie making the 'p' sound when blowing out the candles) but are they supposed to have the image of the letter in their mind as well?

Yes the letter land worksheets were better for letter formation. but i quite like chidlren to 'have a go' in nursery. Letterland had one set for letter discrimination where you had to colour in just the letters relevant to the sheet- for example colour in only the annie apple shape and leave out the 'trick' bouncy ben that was also in the sheet. the chidlren used to do 'rainbow' letters whcih basically was to use different colours to draw(not colour ) the letters. This meant several practises at forming the letters (at least 4 colours had to be used) This was very repetivitive for the chidlren but as an NQT in a well establsihed unit i was unable to voice my reservations . The chidlren did find it boring.

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