School

How Emma has improved:

a parent’s reaction

by Diane Lewton

Jolly Phonics made learning the sounds fun by combining them with actions. Emma and I used to teach each other, with one of us doing the actions and the other saying the sounds. The extra sounds like ‘ou’, ‘or’ etc, are a great help when sounding out words like ‘shout’ or ‘recorder’. Reading is not as painful for either of us when Emma takes time to break down, and phonically sound out, the words. You need to be patient, especially with the longer words, but Emma thrives on learning new words, and the praise she gets when she achieves this.

The system has also helped with learning to spell, and while it doesn’t work with all words, it goes a long way towards getting it right. My son is two years older than Emma and at this stage of his

schooling he was nowhere near as advanced as Emma with either reading or spelling. I would highly recommend Jolly Phonics – I don’t know many 5-year-olds who want to work when they get home, but the Jolly Phonics Workbooks changed that because they were so much fun.

Meeting our needs

by Rod Jones, Headteacher

We had been looking for some time for a suitable phonics scheme to complement our core Reading Scheme. We have been delight-ed with Jolly Phonics which has given an excellent flying start to our 4 and 5 year olds. All the head-shaking and arm-waggling makes it most entertaining and enables the children really to remember the sounds. The structured method has been welcomed by the teachers and we believe it would fit in well with the Literacy Hour approach.

Easier reading, easier writing

by Trudy Wainwright,

Reading teacher and Special Needs

We had been teaching initially by the ‘sight’ word approach, with the children developing a sight vocabulary as they worked through a variety of school books. They were also taught alphabet sounds and key words. To maintain the flow of writing, children were encouraged to use phonic or trial spellings where possible, and ‘magic lines’ with an initial sound. So to launch a programme that teaches the 42 sounds of English, and in a multisensory way with actions and joined-up writing, was a dramatic change! Encouraged by the Using Jolly Phonics video, research into the programme in Toronto, and the support of Dr Marlynne Grant, we decided to take the plunge.

For two weeks before the start of term, parents helped to make flash cards for sounds, ‘word boxes’, handwriting sheets and class games, by photo-copying from The Phonics Handbook. We also bought the Jolly Phonics Videos and the Finger Phonics Books. During week 1 of our 7-week programme, each class was introduced to the first group of letters – ‘s, a, t, i, p, n’, with the children recognising the letter shape, saying the sound and doing the actions. Great fun! The children quickly began to blend the initial sounds into words, as with ‘s-a-t = sat’. As the programme developed they learned consonant and vowel digraphs (two letters which make one sound) and were soon able to read more difficult words.

Because the children were taught to listen to a

sound, match it to letters and then write, spelling became more accurate. Joined handwriting meant that words were remembered more easily and so confidence increased. English spelling is not always regular, so ‘tricky words’ were taught and learned through ‘look, cover, write, check’, ‘say it as it sounds’, and mnemonics. When I visited one reception class at the end of the year, a group of children were writing a story about the Ugly Duckling. All the group were writing whole words, usually with an accurate letter-sound match, using ‘tricky words’ and some capital letters and full stops. The stories ranged from four lines to three pages of writing – fluency of writing is not an issue!

At the end of term, about a month after the completion of the programe, all the children in both classes were assessed in reading and spelling. They read with confidence, sounding out and blending un-familiar words. All attempted a letter sound match for spelling. Of the 65 children assessed (aged between 4 years 10 months and 5 years 9 months), 28 had reading ages as high as 6 years or over, and 36 had spelling ages as high as 6 years or over. On average the children were now 6 months ahead of their actual age – and after just 3 months of teaching. All the children have been making progress and although it is early days, we expect very many fewer of them to need remedial help. Interestingly the boys made just as much progress as the girls.

We are delighted with the progress made by all the

children on the programme. Jolly Phonics has been an invaluable means of ensuring that our youngest children make a secure, confident start on the exciting journey to literacy.

Rethinking our teaching

by Richard Sloper, Reception teacher

Any new material brings about change, but with Jolly Phonics we needed to change some of the practices that we had taken for granted. As an example, we were asked to teach a new letter sound every day. Although it seemed very fast at first, the children were quite capable of doing it, even the digraphs, and even though some of them were not yet five. The actions, such as pretending to click

castanets and say ‘ck, ck’ (shown above) were all good fun. They helped the children remember the sounds.

When my class started in Reception they tested at below the County average. Now they have made a huge improvement. They enjoy reading and writing and are much more confident. I see other teachers who use Jolly Phonics, but less whole-heartedly, and I find myself telling them how much their results could improve if they followed it more thoroughly.

It became clear very quickly that not only was this scheme very enjoyable for all concerned, but also it was very successful. By the end of the summer term, after about 3 months of the programme, almost all of the children’s reading and writing skills were dramatically improved. All of the children could recognise the 42 sounds, and decode the actions. With the exception of 1 or 2 children they could also blend sounds together, and were transferring these skills to other reading activities, including their ‘normal’ reading books. However, the greatest improvement has been in the children’s writing – the sample below is typical. This girl used digraphs in words like ‘hous’ and ‘ies creem’ that are logical and readable. Where in previous years there was just a beginning sound, now the children were all writing out their news. None of the children were frightened to attempt writing any of the letter sounds they had been taught.

I have now started to teach Year 2 at this same school and realise that most of these children do not have the phonic skills of their now-Year 1 counterparts. We have decided to teach Jolly Phonics to these Year 2 children in the confidence that they too will benefit.