I also use Jolly Phonics

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Home : 2006 : November : 19

I also use Jolly Phonics
By Sharon D. W-L

Hi. I teach first grade and do use Jolly Phonics. I have not ever been trained and use it because this is what was made available to me when I started teaching. I eventually bought the teacher's guide and use the letter
order and teach 3 letters/sounds in a 6 day cycle. It usually takes me from Sept. to early January to cover all of the 42 different sounds. I include it with my calendar routine. I have made up my own work sheets based on the letters/sounds we cover. The students are asked to draw, label and colour 3 things that start/or have the sound we are doing that day. The top of the page is

a rectangle box to do this in and the bottom has 2 rows of 5-6 boxes where they print the UPPER-CASE and lowercase letter.

I follow the order set out by Jolly Phonics and used the book to make my own large size teacher flash cards a few years back. This took a lot of work but I had them laminated and use them from year to year now. I also made a little mini set this Summer (about 50% reduced). Again it took me a while but now that I have them they should be good to go each year. I don't use the any other parts of the program as I refuse to buy them myself. If the school had them then I might consider them but I don't feel I really need them.

I also teach the names of the letter, although the program doesn't follow this aspect of teaching letters.

We always learn:
1) The name of the letter: What do we call this symbol/letter.
2) The sound: What sound do we make? What does it look like? (our mouth) What does it feel like? (Our mouth)
3) The motion: What do we do with our body that helps us rememebr this sound?

I also make sure that we find the picture that we have in our classroom on my ABC boarder which is above the chalkboard to help remind us what the letter and sound is and sometimes the motion too.
Example my picture is an egg for the letter Ee. This happens to match the Jolly Phonics sound and motion, however for the letter Bb the picture is of a bus and the story for Jolly Phonics is a bat and a ball. We talk about both.

I find students who do well learning with a phonics based program will do fine no matter which one I use. However, those that struggle will struggle no matter what phonics program you give them and that means you have to allow for different strategies for these learners. Sight words are often the way they learn and they need to practice sight words b/c decoding is not as easy for them.

Also when we "sound out words" - we say "say is slow and say it fast... Good now print the sounds you think you hear." Can you read it back to me. Great! (I try not to say sound it out...:) )

I also suppliment the program with sound/symbol books from Reading A-Z which I am a member. I take in a copy of the sound/symbol book and read it aloud as I introduce each letter. I keep these in a basket that the children can access.

Here is what I put in my booklet for parents to read in September:

Jolly Phonics
We will be using Jolly Phonics to learn our letter sounds and letter sound combinations. Each letter/letter combination has a story and movement that assist some learners with the phonemic awareness of the English alphabet. Each cycle we plan to cover 3 different letters/letter combinations. If you would like more information on the Jolly Phonics Program please contact your child's teacher. The following is the sequence of letter/letter combinations that we plan to follow:
s, a, t, i, p, n, c (hard c - sounds like “k”), k, e, h, r, m, d, g, o, u, l, f, b, ai, j, oa, ie, ee, or, z, w, ng (ing, ong, ang), v, oo (book), oo (moon), y, x, ch, sh, th (feather), th (thumb), qu, ou (ow), oi (oy), ue, er and ar. The soft sounds of “c” (sounds like “s”) and “g” (sounds like “j”) are also introduced once we learn the hard sounds. We also talk about “pinch buddies” ou and ow, mouse/cow. These letters are not always “pinch buddies” but are some of the time. They often make us say “ouch” as if someone has pinched us. (The students are reminded not to actually pinch anyone.) Other times ow is a long o and says it’s own name like in ‘window’. Our goal is to complete the Jolly Phonics program as of January 2007.

Good luck.

Hope you enjoy the Jolly Phonics program and that it meets the needs of your kiddos.

sdwl;)