How often should we listen to reading? According to Kat, it’s not quantity that counts, but quality. Listening to reading has to be done in an effective way if it is to be meaningful. (more…)
Archive for the ‘Phonics’ Category
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Where can I get the Jolly Phonics font?
March 3rd, 2009 
Simon 
First of all, here’s the bad news. The Jolly Phonics font is not free so you’ll have to buy it. The font itself is called Sassoon Primary Font and a Google search will give you some options. Below are some that I have found so see if you can beat the prices I’ve found!
How do you explain the difference between “c” and “k”?
February 7th, 2009 Kat 
You may find the following teaching points helpful:
- Letter ‘c’ represents a /k/ sound when preceding the letters ‘a’, ‘o’ and ‘u’.
- Short words with short vowels usually end with ‘ck’ and this grapheme never begins words
- Letters e, i or y alert the reader that the preceding ‘c’ will represent the /s/ sound. ( ‘soft c’.)
Can’t we skip “ai” and the other digraphs?
January 25th, 2009 Kat 
When I began Jolly Phonics I was a little unsure about the order as I expected the cildren to find the digraphs difficult, however, I went ahead and was delighted to find that they simply accepted that a digraph might be used to represent a sound just as a single letter might be. (more…)
What readers can I use with the Jolly Phonics scheme?
January 2nd, 2009 Kat 
When I began JP I was eager for the children to begin using readers and I bought a set of Little Phonics First Books:
http://www.syntheticphonics.net/product.php?id=21
To begin with, when you haven’t covered too many sounds, the text in these stories may seem uninspired, however the children have such a sense of achievement because they are actually reading independently, that that doesn’t seem to bother them at all. (more…)
How do you teach the “ng” sound?
December 15th, 2008 Kat 
Here are a few suggestions,
Possible Resources:
- ‘ng’ grapheme card and a set of (magnetic) cards including all graphemes introduced to date
- Picture cards eg. someone singing a song/string/ a bird or an aeroplane with both wings visible/ a ping pong bat for table tennis….
- A chart with the words: sing/song/singing/wings/ping pong written but with the ‘ng’ in a different colour marker
Step-by-step… (more…)
Jolly Phonics pronunciation in Irish Schools
November 27th, 2008 Kat 
Jolly Phonics is a British produced synthetic phonics scheme. Therefore, sometimes the pronunciation of certain sounds is different to how they are pronounced in Ireland, e.g. “u”, “aw” and even “a”. Kat2 checked it out…
You have to adapt JP to suit the Irish accent as it is written to reflect ‘British received pronunciation’ (I think that’s the correct term.) (more…)
What kind of reading scheme goes with a synthetics phonics programme?
November 20th, 2008 Kat JP was designed to be used as a systematic synthetic phonics programme.
This system is incompatible with teaching children to memorise sight words and in fact is incompatible with requiring the children to guess words using picture, context or initial sound.
For this reason I no longer use ‘reading scheme books’ and when I do use readers they are a series of decodable readers (Jelly and Bean). (more…)
How many letters do I introduce per week?
November 15th, 2008 Kat If you are using Jolly Phonics as a ‘synthetic phonics’ scheme rather than simply a ‘phonics’ scheme, the aim is to systematically introduce the letter/sound correspondences of the English language and to get the children ‘blending to read’ and ‘segmenting to spell’ a list of cumulatively decodable words containing the letter/sound correspondences (in any position) taught to date as you progress.
That is the reason that the letter/sound correspondences are introduced in the /s/a/t/i/p/n/…..order rather than in alphabetical order. (more…)
How do you explain the different th sounds?
November 12th, 2008 Kat 
I found this difficult to explain when I first encountered ‘th’ in Jolly Phonics, particularly as I don’t think my tongue sticks out significantlly when I say either sound naturally! (more…)
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