Phonics in Year 1

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If your child/school used Jolly Phonics for Year R phonics, what did they do in Year 1 to continue learning/practicing phonics (and/or preparing for the Phonics Test)?

I should "declare" that we home ed. DS has flown through JP, supplemented with other activities/work (he thinks coloring is a waste of time but loved practicing his writing on the JP sheets/in activity books so I found other opportunities to practice writing and sounding out/blending) in addition to all of the practice opportunities JP has (he has made books of his words boxes and lists, books of phonemes, alternative spelling, a binder of his practice writing, etc., all of which he regularly revisits). I know the Yr 1 Phonics Test is a big deal but haven't worked out how children continue phonics after learning it in Reception other than to keep on reading/practicing reading with readers and other books. Do schools tend to follow a program/curriculum?

Okay, I see/get that but do schools use a program to do that? A list and just work their way down with a sound/spelling a week?

Schools are free to use what they want, which leads to a huge variation. Some will be using a comercial scheme which is resourced. Most are probably using L&S, which in phase 5 (the yr 1 content) is essentially a list of alternative spellings/alternative pronunciations.

When you say you have done Jolly Phonics, have you only taught one way of spelling each of the 42 sounds, or have you taught the alternative spellings in the handbook as well?

As Rafa says many schools will be using Letters and Sounds (it's free) others will use high quality programmes - we use Sounds ~Write (Read Write Inc is probably the most well known. Phonics International, Sound Discover etc) but it's up to individual schools which they choose.

We've done the alternative spellings as well (well, we have three left to finish but being close to the end made me realize I need to crack on with the next level/work).

can i ask which alternatives youve taught because Jolly Phonics doesnt include all.

In that case you've already covered a significant chunk of the year 1 work. The guidelines/requirements are actually a bit woolly. There's not really any statutory requirements for which alternative spellings should be taught. Just that alterrnative spellings and pronunciations should be taught.

At this point I think you could either continue with Jolly Grammar 1, 2, 3 etc, or change program and buy something like Phonics International (this fits well with JP and has a huge range of resources for reading and spelling). Alternatively you could use L&S, the spelling appendix of the NC and an alphabetic code chart to see where the gaps in his knowledge are and fill those doing similar sorts of activities to the ones he is doing now.

There are advantages and disadvantages to all of those, but I don't think any would leave you with an issue if you wanted him to slot back into school at any point. Some might actually put him ahead.

I disagree Rafa Jolly Phonics teaches very little in the way of alternatives

ai, ay & a-e. ee & ea. oa, ow & o-e. ie, igh, y & i-e, ue. ew & u-e.

It doesnt teach any alternative consonants or that the same spelling can represent different sounds.

meat, great, head
for, word
out, soup, country,soul

As a proportion of the total number that children need to know it isn't huge, probably a bit less than half in the handbook. More if you use all the grammar books. But letters and sounds isn't very complete either and at the suggested pace doesn't introduce any alternatives during reception.

My problem with the grammar book 1 is that it does waste a year reviewing previously taught spellings. It doesn't seem to get going with a wider range until book 2. But if you aren't constrained by the national curriculum and are prepared to teach at a slower pace, then it might not be too much of an issue as long as you work through all the books.

"As a proportion of the total number that children need to know it isn't huge, probably a bit less than half in the handbook."
Unsure if we are still talking about the phonics check or full phonics knowledge/skills to be a good reader and spell butin either case you need much more than the content of the Jolly Phonics handbook and would certainly have to navigate through the content of the Jolly Grammar books picking out the relevant parts.
Im not sure from what the OP has posted if they have completed the Jolly Grammar series but I thought it was just Jolly Phonics handbook which is very much the starting point certainly not anywhere near what needs to be taught in Y1.

use www.phonicplay.co.uk and www.educationcity.co.uk, both are brilliant for re-enforcing phonics, teaching digraphs, trio-agraphs and split digraphs, education city also has worksheets to support which ever game you have played

fun but not great phonics teaching

It doesnt teach any alternative consonants or that the same spelling can represent different sounds.

Don't the Jolly Grammar books cover much of this?

If JP is so 'incomplete' it poses an interesting question in view of the fact that it has been a very successful programme over the years.

Do we actually need to teach every single letter/sound correspondence?

Will children start self- teaching after a critical number of correspondences have been learned?

It is generally reckoned that there are some 160 - 180 common letter/sound correspondences. I think that most of them covered by most of the SP programmes in YR & Y1. They can be found on the free charts on the Phonics International website. I'd suggest that the OP takes a look at them to work out just how much of the first two years of phonics instruction she has covered.

Jolly Phonics handbook teaches 42 sounds

plus a few (2-4) alternative spellings for /ae/ x 3 /ee/ x 2 /ie/ x 4 /oa/ x 3 /ue/ x3 /or/ x4 /oi/ /er/ x 3 /ou/ x2

what's covered in Jolly Phonics

it works well in reception but then fades in KS1 which could explain why many schools stopped teaching phonics after reception.

The Jolly Grammar books introduce alternatives in a very haphazard way MaizeD (havent got my copies at home to give details) but book jumps from alphabetic order to capital letters to rimes to one alternative to sentences to suffixes to nouns to ....

We use Floppy Phonics, produced by Debbie Hepplewhite., from EYFS to Y2.
We are in infant school, so not sure what happens in the junior schools our children move on to.

www.floppysphonics.com

I think the grammar books do, maizie. Particularly 2 and I suspect 3 as well although I've never seen a copy of that just an overview of the contents. But it is much slower paced than some of the stuff that is now available.

If you're home educating, I'm not sure how much of a problem that is as long as you use the entire set. I'm not sure I'd use the spelling part in a classroom any more although I think the grammar part would be OK.

There are 5 grammar handbooks which take you from Y1 to Y6

The Grammar 1 Handbook features the following topics:

• vowel digraphs • alternative spellings of vowel sounds
• plural endings • short vowels and consonant doubling
• tricky words • consonant blends • nouns – proper/common/plurals
• personal pronouns •verbs • conjugating verbs – present/past/future
• adjectives • adverbs • a/an/the – when to use
• sentences – capital letters, full stops and speech marks
• parsing – identifying the parts of speech in sentences
• alphabetical order

The Grammar 2 Handbook features the following topics:

• new spelling patterns – ei, eigh, ture • silent letters – b, c, h, k, w
• syllables • identifying the short vowels
• spelling rules – consonant doubling and adding suffixes
• tricky word families • revision of elements covered in the Grammar Handbook 1
• further adjectives – possessive • comparatives and superlatives

The Grammar 3

New spelling patters – tch, dge, ure, gn, gh, ex, n for /ng/, s, se and ze for /z/, a for /ar/, y for /i/, a for /o/, ere for /air/, and eer and ere for /ear/.
Suffixes -‘less’, ‘able’ and ‘ful’.
Proper adjectives.
Nouns acting as adjectives.
Collective nouns.
Pronouns – possessive/subjective and object.
The present particle and the continuous tenses.
Paragraphs.
Subject and object in a sentence.
Conjunctions.
Questions and exclamations in speech.

• prepositions • conjunctions • dictionary work • punctuation
• exclamation marks • apostrophes • further sentence development

The Grammar 4 Handbook follows on from The Grammar 3 Handbook and provides revision, consolidation and extension of spelling and grammar rules covered in Phonics, Grammar 1, Grammar 2 and Grammar 3.

The Grammar Handbooks contain 36 spelling and 36 grammar and punctuation lessons for a full year of teaching children for aged 8-9 years. The lessons continue to build upon the knowledge and skills the children have been taught in previous years. Each lesson has a photocopiable worksheet, along with additional resources for extension activities and revision.

Topics covered within the handbook include: revision of topics taught in earlier years; spelling strategies and patterns for complex words; more suffixes and prefixes; verb tenses; homophones; subject and object of a sentence; concrete and abstract nouns; grammatical person; phrases, clauses and sentences and hyphens.

The Grammar 5 Handbook follows on from the Grammar 4 Handbook and provides a full programme for teaching grammar, spelling and punctuation to children aged 9-10.

The Grammar Handbooks contain 36 spelling and 36 grammar and punctuation lessons for the full year of teaching. The lessons continue to build upon the knowledge and skills the children have been taught in previous years. Each lesson has a photocopiable worksheet, along with additional resources for extension activities and revision.

Topics covered within the Grammar 5 Handbook include: revision of topics taught in earlier years; spelling strategies and patterns for complex words; more suffixes, prefixes and perfect tenses; adverbs, part participles regular and irregular; preposition phrases; transitive and intransitive verbs; phrasal verbs; adjectives (order); sentence boxes to help children understand sentence structure; punctuation including colons, bullet points and brackets.

As you can see it teaches consonant blends and rimes MaizieD

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If u home ed. and your DS is clearly making very good progress in reading and writing, why on earth are u worried about the phonics test?

It's of no relevance or importance whatsoever to children who have moved past the basic decoding phase and have progressed to reading for meaning.

It has every relevance regardless of age or reading stage which is why it is commonly used as a diagnostic tool. However I would personally want something more detailed