In the first year of Jolly Phonics the children are expected to:
- learn 42 letter sounds, followed by 22 alternative spellings
- form the letters correctly
- blend words that use the known letter sounds
- segment and write words and sentences, from dictation and independently
- read and spell 72 tricky words
- read decodable books
This gets the children off to a flying start. Once a child can read and write relatively easily then it is important to strengthen other literacy skills, namely more complex comprehension, vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, dictionary work and grammar.
The Jolly Phonics Grammar Handbooks have been developed to provide these skills. The same multi-sensory and active approach has been used to make the learning more interesting and effective, such as providing actions and colours for the parts of speech. For example, the nouns are black, pronouns pink, adjectives blue, verbs red, adverbs orange, conjunctions purple and prepositions green. You can also see that there are actions for the parts of speech. They are shown in the boxes (demonstrated).
The Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation programme extends throughout the primary years until the children are 11 years old. There are five handbooks, which will soon be six, consisting mainly of reproducible activity sheets for two lessons a week. Each lesson is designed to be about one hour in duration and materials are provided for 36 weeks.
Generally speaking ‘The Phonics Handbook’ covers the first year of teaching and is followed the next year by The Grammar 1 Handbook. At the end of the first year of Jolly Phonics it is important that the majority of the children have learnt the letter sounds, automatically blend unknown words and write confidently. They should have developed a good phonic knowledge.
Circumstances around the world vary a great deal and if the majority of the children in a class are not confident with reading and writing simple decodable text then it is better to delay the start of the Grammar 1 Handbook and concentrate on improving the basic reading, writing and phonic skills that the children should have learnt in the first year.
The first grammar handbook is similar in format to the Jolly Phonics Handbook. Here is the contents page, which lists what is taught each week, followed by useful information about teaching the grammar and spelling. Teachers know very well that some children take longer to learn new information and that it is important to always revisit and practise what has been taught. This applies particularly to the digraphs that were taught in the first year of teaching, which is why one digraph is revised virtually every week in the spelling lesson. Here the <sh> digraph for the /sh/ sound is being revised. Opposite the children’s activity sheet are the lesson notes for the teacher. The first part of the lesson is a revision exercise of all 42 letter sounds, then the main point; in this case, making a list of the words that use the <sh> spelling of the /sh/ sound, Then there are instructions for what is needed to complete the spelling sheet. Each lesson includes the dictation of six words and three short sentences, which concentrate on the focus digraph.
Lastly there is a spelling list of 10 words for the children to take home and learn. These words should also be practiced at odd moments during the week at school. The first two in the list are really easy. The children just listen for the sounds and write the letters for the sounds. The third one has a consonant blend in it, which makes it slightly more difficult to hear all the sounds, as with ‘clap’ /c-l-a-p/. Then the next four spellings are simple and use the focus letter sound. For the 8th & 9th words the tricky words are revisited, starting right from the very first ones, but this time putting more emphasis on accurate spelling. Lastly there is a challenging longer word that is regular and relatively easy, too. The other 35 spelling sheets follow the same format, revising the digraphs.
Now the other lesson in the week is the grammar lesson. As the children are young, the word grammar is used broadly and includes punctuation, alphabetical order, doubling rules, dictionary work, as well as parts of speech. The aim, over the years, is to bring more conscious control over the clarity and quality of the children’s writing, which later will help them understand more complicated texts and learn foreign languages with greater ease.
The first lessons revise the formation of capital letters, and provide the children with a simple understanding of what a sentence is: that it should make sense, start with a capital letter and end with a dot, which is known as a full stop in the English version of the handbook and a period in the American version.
Then the children are introduced to Proper Nouns. There is an action for them and the colour linked to them is black. The colours are useful for identifying the parts of speech and are the same as those used in Montessori Schools. So here are the lesson notes starting with the Aim, then the Introduction and Main Point.
For this lesson the children are learning that special names, such as their own names, the name of their teacher, school, road, town, hospital etc. are always written with a capital letter at the beginning. They are known as Proper Nouns.
For the first two years there are big books to support the teaching. This is the Proper nouns page. Here are pictures of some of the other pages (demonstrated). There is an action for a Proper Noun. It is to touch your forehead with two fingers. This is the same action as that used for the word ‘name’ in British Sign Language. Teachers can then ask the children to give them one of these (action demonstrated) and the children provide several proper nouns. Alternatively the teacher can call out words and if it is a proper noun the children can do the action. It helps to keep the children active and interested.
The colour for nouns is black. This enables the children to start learning to parse, which is identifying the parts of speech. They look at a sentence, like this top one, ‘Javid attended Hillside Primary School’ and underline the Proper Nouns in black (demonstrated).
Later on, after the children have been taught more parts of speech and their colours, then they can identify more words in sentences like this one, ‘She looked carefully for the silver coin.’ The first word is a pronoun, so the word ‘she’ is underlined in pink, the next word is the verb ‘to look’ and the word ‘looked’ needs a red line under it. Then there is the adverb ‘carefully’, which describes the verb and needs an orange line under it. The noun is the word ‘coin’, so the word ‘coin’ should be underlined in black but there is also a description of the noun. It is a silver coin, so silver is an adjective and needs a blue line under it. Lastly the word ‘for’ is a preposition. It is a word that enables the pronoun to link to the noun. So it should have a green line under it (parsing demonstrated).
The format for all the handbooks is similar, except that each one becomes progressively harder as the children become older and more skilled.
For example, in ‘The Grammar 3 Handbook’ there are more activities to be completed, not just those linked to learning the spellings. Here are activities for practising skills that were taught in the grammar lessons. The words in this activity have to be looked up in the dictionary, these words split into syllables and the children have to identify the parts of speech and the subject in these sentences. It is only through regularly practising these skills do they become easy.
Traditionally the teaching of grammar has been thought of as being too difficult for young children. In our experience this is not true, particularly when the children, like those using the Jolly Phonics Grammar Programme, are taught in a fun, active and multi-sensory way, starting with simple aspects and gradually progressing to the more complex ones.
It is important to keep the teaching simple, use the step-by-step progression and frequently revisit what has been taught, which is why it is advisable to follow the order of the teaching in the handbooks. For example, the nouns need to be known before the adjectives because the adjectives describe the nouns. Also older children cannot be expected to start the handbook that is appropriate for their age if they haven’t been taught the concepts and knowledge in the previous handbooks.
In this Jolly Learning catalogue there is information for teachers wishing to have a much more detailed training in the Jolly Phonics Grammar programme. One of the options is the extremely informative CPD online training course and the other is a training day delivered by an experienced Jolly Phonics teacher. Links to these courses have been provided in the Links section below.
Teachers around the world often prefer their children to have pupil books, like these, rather than reproducible activity sheets. Information about these and other materials linked to the Jolly Phonics Grammar programme can be seen in the ‘Other videos’ section below.
All Links
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Ideal for the teacher who wants to gain a thorough understanding of how to teach children to read and write using Jolly Phonics.
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Jolly Phonics training is given by independent, experienced teachers who use Jolly Phonics extensively in their schools.
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Ideal for the teacher who wants to gain a thorough understanding of how to teach children to read and write using Jolly Phonics.
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An audio of the letter sounds is available on this website.
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The words are organised in a progressive way. There is a set of words, for the children to blend and read, that use each new letter sound, as well as the ones that have previously been taught.
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There are many black and white pictures that are suitable for auditory blending - as used in Part 4 of 'Preventing reading and writing problems'.
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This font is frequently used in schools, as well as in the Jolly Phonics materials.
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These standardised tests have been made available on the Reading Reform Foundation website. It is advisable to read the instructions carefully before using them.
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This is one of several pieces of research on the Sound Discovery website.
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Debbie Hepplewhite's online synthetic-phonics course for teaching reading and writing.
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This chart clearly shows the many alternative spellings linked to the sounds of English. Teaching guidance is also provided.
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It is always helpful to keep in mind the basic principles of synthetic phonics teaching. This set of principles was developed by members of the Reading Reform Foundation.
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This link is to Debbie Hepplewhite's website, which has several types of alphabetic-code charts.
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King Wizzit Series - decodable readers
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Decodable Readers - particularly suitable for children who struggle with reading (beginners, advanced and mature readers)
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Decodable Readers - Levels 1 - 4
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Decodable Readers - Sets 1 - 10
Free online flash version available -
Decodable Readers
Dandelion Launchers - initial (simple) code
Dandelion Readers - extended (complex) code
Series of books for older struggling readers -
Decodable Readers - Sets 1 - 7
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Decodable Readers - several sets starting with simple letter-sound correspondences and gradually progressing to complex
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Decodable Readers - Stages 1 - 6
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Decodable Readers - Levels 1 - 6
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Decodable Readers and online decodable ebooks
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Irina Tyk is an expert in synthetic phonics and has enabled many children to read and write successfully. The standards achieved have been exceptionally high.
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Sound Discovery was developed by Dr Marlynne Grant and is particularly suitable as an intervention programme for anyone wishing to teach children who have problems with learning to read and write.
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Mona McNee has been a strong campaigner for synthetic phonics and has successfully taught struggling children for many years. Her book is particularly helpful for parents.
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Sound Foundations was developed as an intervention programme for the children who struggle to read and write. The authors have had a huge amount of experience and success with this type of teaching.
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Sound Steps to Reading was written by Diane McGuinness, who is a leading expert on the nature and structure of writing systems and how this applies to teaching reading and spelling. It is a successful Linguistic Phonics programme, which has similar principles to synthetic phonics.
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The Sound Reading System was developed by Fiona Nevola and is based on the work of Diane McGuinness, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of South Florida. Fiona Nevola founded the charity 'Our Right to Read', provides training to teachers and tuition to struggling readers.
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Phonics International is an online course developed by Debbie Hepplewhite. Debbie is a synthetic phonics expert and has a wealth of experience in teaching synthetic phonics. Her online course has a huge amount of teaching guidance and resources in it. She also works as a consultant and provides training in the UK.
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This article is incredibly interesting and enlightening. It is well worth reading.
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This list of synthetic phonics principles was compiled by members of the Reading Reform Foundation.
http://www.rrf.org.uk -
The RRF is an organisation dedicated to campaigning for better teaching of reading in the English language. This website has something to offer everyone who is interested in the teaching of reading.
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This link provides access to experimental research, which was commissioned by scientists wanting to test the effectiveness of synthetic phonics teaching (Jolly Phonics).
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Many teachers have measured the improvement of their children's reading and spelling ability on standardised tests. Several of them have written case studies about their results and experiences. These can be seen on the Jolly Learning website or through this link.
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This list of synthetic phonics principles was compiled by members of the Reading Reform Foundation.
http://www.rrf.org.uk -
Dr Bonnie Macmillan describes the findings of experimental research on beginning reading instruction. Research points decisively to the need for direct teaching of certain key skills in order to produce maximum reading success.
This book is well worth reading. -
Prof Diane McGuinness combines her own scientific and clinical experience with a synthesis of modern research on reading, to show how different methods of teaching reading could successfully improve standards of literacy.
This book is highly recommended. -
Dr. Beth Robins is the presenter for this webinar. For her doctorate she studied the research linked to beginning reading instruction in the US and UK.
She is a retired teacher and provides training in synthetic phonics.
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Elizabeth Nonweiler is the the presenter for this webinar. Elizabeth is an excellent consultant and trainer in synthetic phonics in the UK. She has given training in 19 countries.
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An audio of the letter sounds is available on this website.