Why is jolly phonics so successful

Some have even adopted Jolly Phonics as government policy. Research indicates the early introduction of literacy gives children a flying start to their education. The Jolly Phonics approach is widely considered one of the most effective way to teach children how to read and write in English.

Not only that, on the front page of The West Australian recently the Federal Government announced increased funding for literacy training to include… phonics! Jolly Phonics is a comprehensive programme, based on the proven, fun and muliti-sensory synthetic phonics method that gets children reading and writing from an early age. This means that we teach letter sounds as opposed to the alphabet.

These 42 letter sounds are phonic building blocks that children, with the right tools, use to decode the English language. When reading a word, they recognise the letters and blend together the respective sounds; when writing a word they identify the sounds and write down the corresponding letters.

These skills are called blending and segmenting. These are two of the five skills that children need to master phonics:. Alongside these skills children are also introduced to the main alternative spelling of vowels. These five skills form the foundation that children build on with each year of grammar teaching.

You can view videos for each of the five key skills by clicking on the buttons below. Jolly Phonics works — proven results! Children also learn to identify sounds in words e. The next steps are to begin to connect the sound to the printed letter on each page of the songbook, and then to print the letter s that make the sound. Once the sound-letter connection has been firmly established, children blend familiar sounds to read words in the reading process and segment sounds they hear to record words in the writing process.

Add tricky words, and finally, the children are reading, and writing with increased fluency and greater comprehension, using sounds they have been taught!

As a Jolly Phonics Trainer since , I often had teachers and parents ask about high-quality, low-cost resources to complement the Jolly Phonics program. I often shared resources that I had created for my students, and in turn, decided to become a teacher-author at Teachers Pay Teachers.

It teaches 42 sounds in a multi-sensory, fun way that enables children to use them to read and write words. You will find that Jolly Phonics is effective as a stand-alone program, but also fits in well with broader based literacy programs.

All of the material is suitable for use in school. Much of it is also well suited to use at home. Independent studies find that after one year, children taught with Jolly Phonics have an average reading age that is twelve months ahead of their chronological age.

Their spelling age is usually slightly further ahead. Boys typically do as well as girls. In Jolly Phonics you teach the 42 main sounds of English. The sounds are in seven groups. This is shown below. Each sound has an action which helps children remember the letter s that represent it.

As a child progresses you can point to the letters and see how quickly they can do the action and say the sound. Teach one letter sound each day. As a child becomes more confident, the actions are no longer necessary. One of the easiest way to know how to spell a word is to listen for the sounds in that word. Even with the tricky words, an understanding of letter sounds can help. Start by having your child listen for the first sound in a word.

Games like I-Spy are ideal for this. Next try listening for the end sounds, as the middle sound of a word is the hardest to hear. Begin with simple three-letter words such as cat or hot. A good idea is to say a word and tap out the sounds.

Three taps mean three sounds. Say each sound as you tap. Take care with digraphs. The word fish, for instance, has four letters but only three sounds, f-i-sh. Look at the word to see which bit is tricky. SAY the word and listen to the sounds.

Ask the child to try writing the word in the air saying the letters. Cover the word over and see if the child can write it correctly. Check to make sure. Say the word so each sound is heard. The initial letter of each word in a saying gives the correct spelling of a word. Using joined-up writing also improves spelling.

Jolly Grammar 1 provides 36 explicit lessons to teach a wide range of language forms including the parts of speech. There are lessons for plurals — regular and irregular; punctuation; and simple verb tenses… past, present, and future. And there is a review of the 42 sounds of our language and alternate spellings of sounds. This program takes part of the time devoted to English. Together with Jolly Phonics, they provide a course for years of primary instruction.

Use Grammar 6 for children aged As a result, children are developing the reading and writing skills required for greater comprehension, and enjoyment of our language.

Am really grateful about jolly learning. The results show a large average difference from the teaching method used. They also show a major difference in underachievement.

And finally they show that this kind of phonics teaching is highly suitable for children with English as a second language. Getting ready for reading: Early phoneme awareness and phonics teaching improves reading and spelling in inner-city second language learners — by Morag Stuart. This evaluation was prior to their well known study in Clackmannanshire. Johnston and Joyce Watson.

Clackmannanshire Case Study. A later study in Clackmannanshire, after 7 years, answered the question of whether the children retained their gain in literacy. This paper summarises the results on page 8, paragraph 3.

As shown, their literacy skills had improved further. Clackmannanshire after 7 years. West Dunbartonshire Study. Professor Maggie Snowling, Professor Charles Hulme and others, carried out a study with young children with poor oral language on starting school. They compare two different interventions, one with extra phonological training using Jolly Phonics and one with extra oral language training. Yorkshire results. The link below is to the results published at the time.

The Second Cohort is the significant one where the teaching was for a full year. It showed not only a large average gain in reading age but important other findings. Not only did the boys do as well as the girls, but no difference by whether children had free school meals or not a measure of social class. Bristol results There is also a Jolly Phonics case study on this school from the same time:.