Jolly Phonics
Learning Letter
Sounds
Introducing Letter Sounds
In the UK 42 sounds : to be covered in about 9
weeks : one new letter sound per day.
In Spain ? –
One or two new letter sounds per week:
42 sounds to be covered in a school year?
Teaching Steps
Listening : The skill of listening is required for children to be
better able to recognize sounds (phonemes) in words that they will
be introduced to.
Rhyming :As adults we recognize when words like /gate/, /eight/,
/late/ rhyme. However, for a child this skill has to be practised
before it becomes a natural process. Nursery rhymes and poems are
an excellent way to introduce rhyming.
Comparing & Contrasting Sounds of Rhyme :This is an
important step that is often overlooked. By encouraging children to
compare and spot the odd one out you are helping them fine tune
their listening skills for later on when they will need to recognize
patterns and phonemes in words.
Awareness of Syllables : After a child becomes aware of words
the next step is the awareness that words are divided into parts or
beats we call syllables. An awareness of syllables will enable your
child to perform phonemic segmentation (counting out the number
of phonemes in a word).
Phoneme Recognition :Phoneme Recognition (remember a
phoneme is the name given to the smallest unit of sound in
our English Language - of which there are approx. 42 sounds.
is really an awareness that the words we are saying are
made up of small sounds. For example the first phoneme in
the word /cat/ is the /k/ sound.
Phoneme Spelling : This involves becoming so familiar with
phonemes (sounds) that a child will be able to manipulate
words by adding and deleting phonemes at the beginning,
middle and end of words to make new words. For example
/r/at, can become /p/at or /s/at because the first phoneme
has changed. Or /rat/ can become /rot/, /rut/ when the
middle phoneme is changed - and /rat/ becomes /rap/,
/ran/, /rag/ when the end phoneme is changed.
Phase One (Nursery/Reception)
Activities are divided into seven aspects, including environmental
sounds, instrumental sounds, body sounds, rhythm and rhyme,
alliteration, voice sounds and finally oral blending and segmenting
Phase Two (Reception) up to 6 weeks
Learning 19 letters of the alphabet and one sound for each. Blending
sounds together to make words. Segmenting words into their separate
sounds. Beginning to read simple captions.
Phase Three (Reception) up to 12 weeks
The remaining 7 letters of the alphabet, one sound for each.
Graphemes such as ch, oo, th representing the remaining
phonemes not covered by single letters. Reading captions,
sentences and questions. On completion of this phase, children will
have learnt the "simple code", i.e. one grapheme for each phoneme
in the English language.
Phase Four (Reception) 4 to 6 weeks
No new grapheme-phoneme correspondences are taught in this
phase. Children learn to blend and segment longer words with
adjacent consonants, e.g. swim, clap, jump.
Phase Five (Throughout Year 1)
Now we move on to the "complex code". Children learn more
graphemes for the phonemes which they already know, plus different
ways of pronouncing the graphemes they already know.
Phase Six (Throughout Year 2 and beyond)
Working on spelling, including prefixes and suffixes, doubling and
dropping letters etc.
Activities
Phonics Games
http://www.familylearning.org.uk/phonics_games.html
A collection of online, interactive games for practising phonics.
Resources for Phonics : http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/index.htm
Resources for teachers and some games for children
Classroom Games : (see PDF handouts.)
A collection of games to play with children in class