jolly phonics

[Pizzahutlover]

is it any good

You can't spam the boards like this. It's against the Talk Guidelines.

I have reported.

I would be interested in what other teachers think of this app ... and hope parents aren't influenced by the blanket coverage here!

I'll have a look and see. The phrase 'It focuses on the first 100 hfw' isn't filling me with confidence though.

mrz: I asked on one of the (many) other spammed threads if the poster could link the DofEd list of highly effective phonics resources for schools.

I tried searching their website, but it's so crappy frustrating to search that I gave up. Do you happen to know what list it is?

Here's the Self Evalustion on the DfE site www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/305851/Phonics_self-assessment_form_-_Monster_Phonics.pdf which rings alarm bells!

Thanks!

The disclaimer "we do not endorse or rank the publishers or products that appear in this list" says it all I think. Highly disingenuous of the spammer. The app might well be good but reviving a bunch of zombie threads and spamming them all with the same misleading message isn't going to encourage anyone.

It doesn't appear to be available on android.

Looking at the blurb and the Self-evaluation, I think I can see where they're going with it. Teaching reading and spelling of the HFW through decoding, blending and grouping words with similar 'tricky' graphemes is not a bad idea, and is probably better than most of the apps out there that try to teach HFW.

What I've read does seem to show some issues with the subject knowledge of whoever wrote it. The use of the term 'silent letters' isn't great. And it gets worse with the examples given in the self evaluation. The first 'h' in 'which' isn't silent (or at least it's as silent as all the other letters), it's part of a digraph that is used to represent the sound /w/.

The 'tricky letters' (not sure I like this term) identified in the words 'want, mother, coming, can't, magic' aren't all that tricky. They are all fairly common. They are identified as tricky in L&S because that particular scheme introduces them at a stage where those correspondences haven't been taught. They may not be tricky words in another scheme.

Difficult to know how far those two things affect the app without seeing it.

Not sure about the monster colour thing. might be a good hook for some children. I'd want to be sure that it didn't detract from actually looking at letters and end up with children who could manage the app but couldn't transfer that to other reading where there weren't colours/monsters etc.

I use JP with my reception class - the children love it. I do tend to change the teaching sequence to fit with "letters and sounds", just because there are tons of online games that fit with L&S sequence. There is cute JP app for iPad.

Dd did it in p1-3. She loved it, she would sing the songs at home, in the car etc

My kids all started on jolly ohonics at nursery when they were rising 3 (one of them is August born, she was barely 2.5 when she officially started but since we already had the wall chart and the videos etc she was familiar with inky and pals before that). They all then moved onto ORT books when they were 3-4 and arrived at school reading well (very well, for 2 of them - they both entered reception reading at above ORT level 9). It is a marathon and not a sprint but they were all ready and keen, despite all of them having, it transpired, SpLDs. I firmly believe that beginning with jolly phonics enabled them to formulate their own coping strategies which have stood them in good stead over time - I do agree with the people who say it's a marathon not a sprint though.

The problem is Rafa they aren't teaching them through decoding

Eg the prog presents

Said as four separate letters s- a - I - d and saw as three separate letters s-a-w rather than as sounds/ spellings (graphemes) s-ai-d and s-aw

I can see how that would be a problem. Still think it's a step up from 'can't be decoded have to be learnt as sight words' which is what most of the apps out there do.

Not enough of a step up that I'd want to use it though, for that reason and the points in my previous post.

The 'tricky letters' (not sure I like this term)

I'd agree with you, Rafa, in not liking this term, as the letters are not in the slightest bit tricky; they are just 'letters'. It is the way they are used to spell a particular sound that is 'tricky' (in other words, less common). I'd be happy to have them referred to as 'tricky sound spellings', or 'tricky spellings', though.
What do you think?

No decoding as far as I can see I'm afraid

It presents the letters in a random order and the player has to rearrange them to make the word.

correction sounds are using in the letter tracing activity bit not in the mix & spell activities

That's where I think the app design has probably got in the way of what they were trying to teach. I think they started off with the right idea, but the way it's designed doesn't actually teach what they think it does.

Selecting 'y' and 'ou' or 's', 'ai', and 'd' from a range of grapheme tiles would be better.

I'd be quite happy to leave the term 'tricky' out of an app like this. I'm not sure it's necessary. There might be better ways to get across the same idea.

Yes I think they probably had the right idea but it doesn't work in practice

Which is a shame. If they can get it right and on to Android there's a huge gap in the market. I haven't seen anything so far that I have liked enough to recommend.

I assume SoundsWrite will be fine, but again it's only on ipad.

The Sounds~Write app allows parents to follow exactly the same process as taught in a school using the programme. I've recommended it to the parent of a child with complex SEN because they felt out of their depth but I've found most parents don't have ipads