Isabella State School
Jolly Phonics Information Session
A bit of background…
Learning to read is a complex process, which involves many interrelated skills. The
skills are not always sequential, sometimes they are learned simultaneously. The skills
a child must master are as follows;
Developing oral language / knowledge of vocab
Recognising letters of the alphabet
Learning the sounds associated with the letters
Word families and word building
Sight word vocabulary
Decoding
Punctuation and capitalisation
Spelling patterns
Comprehension
Please note: These are not presented in the order they have to be learnt.
What is Jolly Phonics?
• Jolly Phonics is a systematic synthetic phonics program
designed to teach children to read and write.
• Children learn the 42 letter sounds of the English
language, rather than the alphabet.
• They are then taken through the stages of blending and
segmenting words to develop reading and writing skills.
5 Basic skills in Jolly Phonics?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Learning the letter sounds (introducing
actions)
Learning Letter formation
Blending
Identifying sounds in words
Tricky Words
Learning the letter sounds
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•
The 42 main sounds of English are introduced first.
Children learn each letter by its sound, not its name (for instance, ‘a’ is learnt as it
is heard in ‘ant’).
• The sounds are not introduced alphabetically, but in seven carefully selected
groups.
• The first group (s, a, t, i, p, n) can be combined to create the largest number of
simple three letter words. Eg. sat, sit, ant, tip, sip, tap
Letters that are easily confused like ‘b’ and ‘d’ are presented in separate groups.
The seven groups of letter sounds are;
Learning the letter sounds cont...
• Some sounds are written with two letters such as ‘ee’ and ‘or’
– these are known as digraphs. Being able to recognise
graphs, digraphs, trigraphs and quadgraphs is really important
when decoding - At Isabella SS this is a whole school focus.
Learning the letter sounds cont...
• Each letter sound has a corresponding action.
By performing the action for each sound, students are
using kinesthetic, auditory, visual and speech methods
to help them remember the letter representing the sound.
Ask your child the sound and ask what the action is.. Get
them to teach it to you!
Learning Letter Formation
Students are taught how to form each letter in the correct
way as they are being taught. They first use their finger
to imitate how the teacher forms the letter in the air or on the board. They then move
on to form letters using a pencil.
Lower case formation is concentrated on initially, then the formation of capital letters
is taught.
Segmenting & Blending
Segmenting is the process of breaking up the word into sounds and Blending is the
process of running the sounds together to make a word.
For eg. The word
to form the word.
sat is segmented – s-a-t and then run the sounds together
Segmenting and blending can be quite difficult for beginning to read students as they
might not know their sounds well enough and lose track of the word if the letter
sounds are not emphasised correctly.
Great tip: Jolly Phonics suggests saying the sounds quickly to hear the word and saying
the first sound slightly louder!
Eg.
S-a-t
Tricky Words
How hard is the English Language to learn? The answer is…. Very hard! Here is why…
Some words in English have irregular spelling and can’t be read by blending… Try sounding out;
These irregular words are called ‘Tricky Words’ in the Jolly Phonics Program and have to
memorised separately to increase reading fluency. This is begun once the students are able to
recognise all the 42 sounds and blend them into simple words.
How can you help as Parents?
The Jolly Phonics program encourages parental support because of the beneficial effect of praise
and encouragement to all children whilst learning. It advises parents to be guided by the pace at
which their child wants to go, and to practice letter sounds and literacy skills with them. Extra
practice at home will lead to greater fluency in your child’s reading.
Sooo…
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•
•
Grab yourself a “Helpful Hints for Parents’ sheet and a set of sounds and their
actions..
Find out what letter is being taught in the classroom that day or for the week and
practice these sounds with your child. If you are not sure about articulating the
sound correctly, talk to the teacher, look at the action.. It gives you a big clue!
When you know the first set of sounds have been taught… see if you can start
segmenting and blending the letters to make words… Put them on your fridge and
practice them.