20222023
Jolly Phonics Pilot Project
Thailand
Written by
Jay Richardson
EAC School
Thailand
jay@eacschool.com
Introduction
This paper presents the pretest and post-test reading scores of Kindergarten
students as a means of studying the impact of “Jolly Phonics” on Kindergarten
English literacy skills in multiple provinces throughout Thailand. Jolly Phonics is a
multi-sensory method of teaching synthetic phonics. The methodology is highly
student-centered and fast paced. This allows students to begin encoding and
decoding right at the very beginning of the course and provides students with the
necessary skills to blend words at a much earlier stage than other methods.
Students are not required to memorise word spelling, but synthesize them using
the knowledge provided during the classroom sessions, creating much more
impactful and meaningful education.
Scope of the Pilot Project
In order to evaluate the impact of this method, Government and City Hall schools
were chosen across six provinces in Thailand to take part in the study for the
academic year beginning May 2022 through to April 2023. Six schools from each
province were approached to take part in the training and up to 2 schools from
each province were asked to act as “controls”. These schools would not be taking
part in the training, but agreed to carry out the same assessment tests as the
pilot schools, allowing a comparison of results to be carried out. Each school
taking part in the pilot project agreed to provide a single classroom for testing
and training and up to 2 teachers.
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Selection Criteria
In order to provide consistency throughout the study, only Government and City
Hall schools were included. Private schools were not included. Of the schools in this
study, non were running any form of English Programme, or using native English
teachers in the classrooms. All programmes had to be “Saman” (meaning “normal”
or “standard”), and all must be taught by Thai nationals. In this way, no schools had
an unfair advantage or could affect the result with bias.
In order to obtain the best possible spread of results we chose provinces from both
the South, Central, Eastern, and North Eastern areas. Due to the vast distances
involved in travel we looked for provinces far enough apart to allow meaningful
comparison, but close enough to be practical to travel to. Figure 1 shows the final
selected areas.
Fig. 1
Provinces List
South:
Nakhon Sri Thammarat
Phuket
Chumphon
Central:
Suphan Buri
North East:
Burriram
East:
Chon Buri
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Overview of Synthetic phonics
Synthetic phonics involves teaching the main 42 English letter-sounds in isolation,
whilst simultaneously teaching children how to form, blend and segment these sounds
to read and write words. Children are also taught “tricky words” that do not follow the
sound system. Alternative spellings of sounds are also included in the scope of the
training. The programme was created by international reading experts Sue Lloyd and
Sara Wernham and is published by one of UK’s leading educational publishers, J olly
Learning Ltd. With Jolly Phonics, the synthetic phonics skills are taught alongside
culturally appropriate stories, songs and actions that make learning to read and write
multi-sensory, child-centered and lots of fun!
Scope of Training
Training covered the entire Jolly Phonics methodology including all 42 sounds of
the English language, encoding, decoding, blending, segmenting, sound recognition
and letter formation. Alternative spellings and tricky words were also covered in
the final session and how this could be beneficial to primary students in the future.
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Lesson planning, timing and teaching techniques were a strong aspect of the
training.
Training was provided to groups of up to 12 teachers in each province over the
course of the academic year. It was agreed to provide 3 separate sessions to
maximise the effect of the training, reduce teacher anxiety and mentor teachers in
a slow, methodical way. In this way we were able to structure the training and
feedback in the most useful way possible and were able to listen to the teachers’
feedback and provide support as necessary.
Training was provided on the following timeline:
Session 1:
At the beginning of the school year before formal classes began.
Session 2:
During the early part of semester 1 we were able to complete all 7 groups and
provide feedback on activities, pacing and provide advice on any challenges
teachers were facing.
Session 3:
At the beginning of semester 2 to provide guidelines for further literacy
development and methods of review and enrichment and how to proceed
after the initial 42 sounds of the alphabet have been taught.
Each of the follow up sessions began with long discussions of teacher experiences
and challenges and idea sharing on how other schools were approaching the
content. In total the project conducted 18 training sessions, over 6 provinces,
working with up to 72 teachers. A list of the schools and numbers of students in
each pilot project in shown in table 1.
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Table 1.
Province
School
Student
Number of
numbers
teachers
Pattaya city School 1
24
2
Pattaya city School 4
37
2
Pattaya city School 5
25
2
Pattaya city School 6
30
2
Pattaya city School 9
32
2
Pattaya city School 10
30
2
Municipal 1 School
25
2
Tessaban2 School
16
2
Tessaban 3 School
25
2
Tessaban 1 School
33
2
Bannongthonglim
24
2
Banpachee School
14
2
Plupplachai School
20
2
Watteppitak School
20
2
Thachai School
30
2
Bansrakrajome School
30
2
Wadphairongwua
20
2
Anubanbanthaprayajak 15
2
Chonburi
Buriram
School
Suphanburi
School
School
Chumporn
Bantubmai School
25
2
Anubansawi
40
2
(Bannapho) School
5
Bannaimuaeng School
30
2
Watpiyawatthanaram
25
2
Banphunghao School
25
2
Watsawangmanus
38
2
Lham Panwa School
30
2
Bansapam
37
2
Banmarkprok School
25
2
Banaonambor School
40
2
Baankalim School
30
2
Banprujumpa School
19
2
Tessaban Watsritawee
31
2
Tessaban Watthaphoe
29
2
Tessaban Watyai
34
2
Tessaban
13
2
Tessaban Wattaocoat
23
2
Tessaban
30
2
947
72
School
School
Phuket
Mongkolwittaya School
Nakhon
Sri
Thammarat
Watsaothongthoang
Watsalameechai
Total
36
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Details of Training Sessions
Session 1:
A detailed background of phonics, what phonics is and the types of phonics systems
was introduced. The pros and cons of each of the type was discussed in contrast to
the older “Rote” systems of teaching reading and writing.
Synthetic phonics was introduced in comparison to Analytical phonics and a
discussion on the efficiency and effectiveness of Synthetic phonics was held.
An overview of the Jolly Phonics system was given and orientation to the 42 sounds
and 7 main groups.
The procedure of Jolly phonics was introduced in partnership with the 5 main skills
taught at each level. In depth instruction and practice of the first 3 groups was
given, along with multiple role plays, overcoming issues, struggling students and
various activities to engage students.
Session 2:
Feedback and review of the first session took up the early part of the morning.
Experiences and developments were shared. Successes and challenges were
discussed and solutions offered.
In depth instruction on the final 4 groups including techniques and activities for
digraphs and diphthongs were introduced. Pacing and assessment were discussed
along with activities and methods for introducing initial and final consonant
clusters.
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Session 3:
A full review was again conducted to ensure teachers were continuing the correct
procedures and were developing in their segmenting skills and confidence was
growing within our teams.
Again, discussions of our successes, challenges and innovations in teaching
methodology was discussed and solutions to issues were suggested.
Alternative spellings, tricky words and sentences level dictation was discussed here
and an overview of how subsequent years may look. Further possible purchased,
or teacher-created resources were discussed and ideas were shared.
Teachers presented examples of their work to the group and examples of student
accomplishments shared.
Pre-Pilot testing
Before any training was given all schools were asked to complete a standard Burt
Word Recognition test that will assess a child’s reading age. In addition to this
students’ phonic awareness was checked by showing letter images from the first 3
groups of Jolly Phonics to assess how many letter sounds were known. As expected,
these scores were very low and are represented in table 2.
Table 2.
Summary of Data Pre-Pilot Result
Sample Group
Control
Schools
Pilot Schools
Burt reading score
Phonics Awareness Score
0.34
0
1.74
0
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Training was then conducted throughout the year at the recommended speed of
introduction of 4 sounds per week with regular reviews and revisions using the Jolly
Phonics methodology.
Post-Pilot testing
At the end of the academic year the same students were given the same
assessments in order to compare the benefits of the pilot and the methodology.
The results shown in Table 3 represent a dramatic differential between the control
and the pilot schools’ results.
Table 3.
Summary of Data Post- Pilot Result
Sample
Group
Burt reading score
Phonics Awareness Score
Control
Schools
3.82
5.88
Pilot Schools
14.87
21.11
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Comparison and Analysis
One major aspect of the analysis is that all schools in all provinces that took part in
and competed the pilot project showed the same level of development and success
across the board. Naturally, all students across all schools developed in both phonic
awareness and word recognition throughout the school year, but the differential
between the control and the pilot schools is quite impressive.
All students had a zero level of phonic awareness at the beginning of the year, but
this changed dramatically by the end of the academic year. This appears to be the
case regardless of gender, province, school size, or teacher’s English literacy level.
This is represented in Figure 2.
Fig. 2
Pre-pilot results
Post-pilot results
A more detailed representation of the information on a province-by-province basis
is shown in table 4.
Table 4.
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A further representation of this trend is illustrated in figure 3.
Fig.3
Challenges Faced
Teacher Concerns
One major limitation of the study was the anxiety felt by the teachers who were
being asked to teach content for a language they themselves could not speak.
Teachers expressed sever worry and concern about teaching phonics and being
unable to physically pronounce the 42 sounds of the English language. An example
of this would be the letter sound of /x/, /z/, /r/ which either do not exist in the Thai
language or are used in a different way. Another linguistic challenge was in
pronouncing the sonorant end sounds of /s/ and /l/, along with /t/, /p/ and other
hard or stop consonants, as these do not exist in Thai language.
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Solution
In order to alleviate these fears, training was written and given in the Thai language
by a bilingual native English speaker, who was able to show how the procedure
could be taught in Thai language, specifically the story that would act as an
introduction to the sound, and strategies and techniques needed for pronouncing
the sounds correctly.
The outcome of this was that teachers not only felt more confident in their
instruction but improved in their own English knowledge and pronunciation.
Student Attendance
Some teachers reported that inconsistent attendance from students were an
obstacle. Absences were due to students being sick, especially during the rainy
season when colds and flu were prevalent. Covid 19 was still an issue during the
course of this project.
Solution
This can be seen as a factor outside of our control and one that affects all areas of
kindergarten teaching in this region. However, regular reviews of previous sounds
and multiple recycling of sounds throughout the day and the week helped alleviate
these issues, especially as kindergarten students tend to be very deductive in their
learning and were able to catch up quite easily.
Administration Issues
One area that challenges schools and teachers the most in the government and
city hall sectors is the vast number of projects, seminars, administrative duties, and
changes to those duties throughout the year. Teachers who had been planning on
working through the 4 sounds per week suddenly found themselves burdened with
many more projects after just a few weeks of the semester and found it hard to
find time consistently throughout the week to follow the recommended pacing of
the content. Indeed, we lost the province of Chumphon after training session 2 due
to their inability to follow the timing due to other extra burdens placed upon them
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during the year. They were unable to fulfill the commitment to provide post pilot
assessment scores and as such are not referenced in the statistics.
Solution
During the adoption of the phonics programme, school administrators should have
the importance of consistency and commitment clearly explained and a
memorandum of understanding be suggested, stating they will earmark enough
time and resources to follow through with the recommended pacing and content.
In this way, teachers can be confident and secure in their semester planning of the
teaching objectives.
Conclusions
The benefits of implementing a structured, well-paced and thorough synthetic
system of reading and writing, such as Jolly Phonics, at the kindergarten level is
apparent to see. All schools in the pilot project exhibited an increase in ability of
word recognition and phonic awareness of roughly 50%, when compared to the
control partners. Teachers became more motivated and developed a sense of
urgency regarding the teaching of literacy, especially phonics. Although this project
was for a single year and was focused on the kindergarten 2 level, students had
already developed a noticeable advantage over their peers in the control schools.
Success breeds confidence and confidence breeds success. This type of positive
feedback loop is invaluable in education, especially in the learning of a foreign
language, which when developed at a young age will serve the student all their life.
Recommendations
Adopting this method of instruction as part of a national strategy from kindergarten
1 through to kindergarten 3 and indeed, in to the early primary years would be
highly beneficial to the academic development of Thai students and teachers alike.
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Further training and support over a longer period of time with a sustained
commitment by teachers, parents, and administrators would serve our students
immeasurably. Expanding the scope of ESL to include phonics as part of the
national curriculum would add greater depth, value, and meaning to the learning
of English as a foreign language in Thailand.
Currently, national indicators and outcomes are focused on vocabulary acquisition
and subject based learning, but little time is given to actual skills-based teaching.
Phonics, especially synthetic phonics, is a highly valuable skill-based way of learning
to read, write, and understand English.
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