hmmm...jolly phonics...

[Raahh]

i am sure this is a subject that has cropped up before, but i have just found out that ds' school are going to be teaching him using jolly phonics. Up till now they have used letterland, which is what i used when he was in pre-school My sister is a childminder and had all the flash cards etc from her own daughter. Will miss Annie Apple et al, and wondered if anyone has any thoughts on it?

(saw an old AIBU thread, and the teaching of the letter 'r' seemed an issue??)

not concerned, really, just interested. Ds will catch on to any thing, as he is loving reception at the mo, it's all new and there is great novelty value to it all.

which is why we should teach kids foreign languages younger...(but that's a different subject altogether!!)

We use jolly phonics in my pre-school, I think they are really good, mind you the letter u always makes me laugh [smirk] I've not any experience with letterland.

Ds1 is learning jolly phonics and finds it all very exciting. They teach R as a dog shaking something and growling "r-r-r-rr"

Have no experience of any other methods but dd1 - who's just gone into Year 1 - did Jolly Phonics in Reception and is now a phenomenal reader. (Before starting school, she was able to recognise the letters of the alphabet but we had not begun to do any proper reading whatsoever). HTH

Didn't see the other thread, but I'm guessing that the way "r" is treated is controversial in certain parts of the country. The way DD1 was taught to pronounce "er", "or" and "ar" certainly bears no resemblance to the way I pronounced them when I grew up in Edinburgh! Do they adapt it to different regional variations?

As a fun and effective way of teaching sounds to little children, it seems to be spot on. DD1's class knew all the 40 or so phonic sounds within one term of starting school. And my friend's seven year old still acts out words with all the actions when he is struggling to spell them. Which is good entertainment, if nothing else.

(PS - thank you Magic, for confirming that I am not the only one who finds the action for "u" mildly entertaining )

i look forward to finding out about 'u'....

thanks for the comments, i had never heard of jolly phonics, so it's great to know it works.

as ds is my pfb, i am still getting used to the whole reading thing. Hopefullt, when dd starts, i will be more relaxed by it all

the 'r' thing was something to do with the way they blend it with other leters so it is more of an ahh sound rather that arr. or something!

oh, yes, i agree re - the dog/puppy one (also think he looks bit sinister. imo.!)

smith - there is a Scottish version of jolly phionics, yes

i'm finding the whole process of ds learning to read really fascinating- i don't remember learning to read - which i guess is a good thing. If i remembered too much ,it may suggest problems or struggling. I'm also 35, so memory is weak...lol!

Whilst on the topic of jolly phonics, which my DD is learning incidentally, does anyone have any experience of them teaching the phonic sound and the 'normal sound'. A friend was recently told that the children are only marked as having mastered a letter when they know that, for example, the letter 'a' is the phonic sound as in apple and the sound a (as in the phonic sound ai). I was amazed at this because I understood that in reception they avoid teaching them the 'normal sound' and concentrate on phonics as it confuses them.

I do have a letterland book, picked up in an Oxfam shop when my DD was about 2 in a pushy parent moment . I must admit I do like the illustrations! However there is loads of supporting material for Jolly Phonics which is great!

cat64 yes it does and I know about the 44 phonemes (being pushy parent have bought all the Jolly Phonic workbooks ). I think having read your explanation my friend probably got the wrong end of the stick (or maybe I did!) because I thought she meant they needed to know the letter names too which is what I was worried about because I have avoided these as much as possible with DD because I thought they would confuse her!

Very glad to hear there is a Scottish version, Pointydog.

Raahh, yes - the version used here in the south east blends the "r" sound at the end of words so much that it disappears entirely. So car becomes cah, father becomes fatha, etc. Which is pretty accurate if you speak BBC english, but my parents found it very odd, on account of mum being Scottish and Dad being from Hereford, where doing a good "aaaarrr!" sound is regarded as something of a birth right!

I'm currently teaching DD3 to read (it's fascinating to observe the process), and we're struggling a touch with my Scottish pronunciation of "r" with her English accent. So I sound out "c..a..r(rrr)..t", and she then blends "carrrrt", looks blankly for a moment and say "oh, yes caht". I did get cross with some of DD1's homework once which involved rhyming words which only worked in an English accent - DD1 has worked out she thinks (and hears) Scottish pronunciation, but verbalises English, which is why she (and I) didn't have a clue with the homework.

We use JP at our pre-school too (and my dd learnt how to read using it at school) and I second the mirth of the 'u' action!

[slightly off subject]

Some rhymes only work with a southern English accent too, when I read 'giraffe' and 'scarf' to my children, they don't rhyme.

lol @ letter u!

I think dressing up letter sounds into anything other that what they are is bloody daft.

I am worried that my already reading and letter competent dd will eb absolutely confounded by the new learning of sounds which she knows inside out...
but we'll see

Piffle how has your DD learnt to read then and what leter sounds does she use? Just interested.

a says ah and sometimes ay...
etc
she does have a phenomenal memory though

is my (now year 1 daughter) the only one to never have done jolly phonics or letterland either at preschool or in recpetion?

they baffle me - when I asked her teacher in her first term of reception about it all, she said the school didn't bother with them. It seems like an awful lot of fuss to me. or maybe I"m lucky as dd has just clicked iwth her reading and didn't need all those things

ok ,so in a non-pushy parent moment, just interested, i downloaded the jp teaching notes, and now see 'get' the letter 'u'. as did dh- ds fortunately didn't get the joke.

i agree with the fact letterland confused him sometimes, because he often can't remember letters in isolation, always as annie apple, for example.

it is really good to hear other peoples experiences- it i so funny when ds recognises words, they are so proud of themselves at this age.

i do agree that regional dialect differences are the thing that have always made me wonder about the benefits of learning to read in this way.

what is thrass?

I'm using a mixture of having taught the basic sounds using no method whatsoever, with Read Write Inc books (on a good deal from the Book People) - whcih DD3 likes because the "sneaky words" (the non-phonetic ones like "the" and "said") are in red, so she can spy them coming up; and a book called the Non-Stop Reader which has funny illustrations, and introduces blends quite early on with triggers similar to JP ("sh" is putting your finger to your lips saying "shhh", "ch" is being a choochoo train, and so on).
So we can flick from one to the other depending on what makes sense at the time. We also do a lot of "whole word" reading, but not from books, more signs etc

Jolly phonics is supposed to be a multi sensory approach to teaching phonics and is therfore more successful to teach on mass as you might say. All children learn in a variety of ways, some children by sight, some learn more through physical movement, some through listening and some children need all three to help them remember. jolly phonics uses all these approaches at the same time and this is why many schools have adopted to use it for the teaching of phonics especially during whole class carpet times.