Does anyone know anything about a scheme called Jelly and Bean?

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DS is in Reception. The book he's brought home is from this scheme. I've never heard of it before but thought it must be new as the book looks very new. It's quite a thin, white book with very simple sentences in it.

Anyway, is it a synthetic phonics scheme? Does it progress all the way up? I know they also have ORT in the infants but none of the Reception children seem to use them so I was wondering if it's a scheme just designed for Foundation Stage.

Thanks

www.jellyandbean.co.uk/

this is the website for the scheme. hope it helps.

www.jellyandbean.co.uk/

this is the website for the scheme. hope it helps.

Yes I know of it, a teacher friend of mine can't speak highly enough of it. She has recommended I buy the set of books for my dc even though they don't use them at their school.

Jelly and Bean is a syntehtic phonics scheme, I believe. As for ORT - if it's the standard Biff Chip etc texts then they're probably not used in YR because they do not adhere to the guidelines schools are supposed to follow for early literacy! Although lots of schools do still use them, and some people swear by them - plenty of others swear at them! They have bought out more up-to-date series too - Songbirds, Floppy's Phonics etc.
HTH

"synthetic" of course - they haven't invented a new form of phonics!

Yes, it's a synthetic phonics based scheme. It's sensible to use one in Foundation Stage when children begin to learn letter sounds and blend, etc. Later on in Key Stage 1 they may use ORT as they progress, but a phonics based scheme is best to begin with - we use Floppy Phonics (ORT).

So they're considered good then, yes? He does seem to enjoy them even though they seem a bit strange. Cats on nuts in boxes or some such. They come home with a little flap with instructions to cover the picture until they've read the words.

It's just that I was talking to a friend today who teaches Reception herself and she had never heard of the scheme. She told me they use something called, ABC is Easy which she thinks is very good. I just wondered what it was and how it might compare to her scheme.

I don't know if their ORT scheme is a new updated version. Must check.

Anyone else with experience? Parent or teacher?

Just bumping in case anyone else has any experience.

I think they are great.

They are specifically designed so that beginner readers who have just learned to blend simple regularly phonic words can actually read them independently. Many other schemes (early ORT in particular) encourage guessing from the pictures, or memorising a repeated sentence, with one word being changed each page or just learning whole words by sight and mixing those with a bit of guesswork.

The Jelly and Bean books can be a little strange, but it's because they only use words that children can read, so the storylines are a little limited! But generally children realise very quickly that they are actually reading properly, and that is a marvellous thing (well, I think so anyway ).

Ooh thanks, Gladbag!
Do you use them as a teacher or parent?

Yes, you are correct, he can sit down and read them independently which is lovely. I just wasn't sure as my friend who teacher his age group had never heard of them.

I'm glad his school are on the right track.

Meant to also say thank you to DLI, BM, VW and Feenie who posted last night and who I rudely ignored!

Hi cc - my DD is currently using these in Reception too. Her school uses the synthetic phonics system exclusively, so I assume this scheme fits in very well with that.

Although the 'stories' are a bit odd, you can see an obvious progression in the length of sentences and the introduction of more (and trickier) words. Also, I think there's just enough repetition so that the children don't have to sound out every single word, without being so repetitive that they can easily guess the words rather than read them.

I feel sometimes that DD could move on a bit faster with them (I think her teacher feels it's better for the kids to build up their confidence gradually, rather than push them at this early stage), but she gets a great sense of achievement from getting through them without struggling, and I am sure she is properly reading them, not just guessing.

Jelly and Bean is brilliant. They are completely decodable and which fits in well with synthetic phonics. Even if the language is slightly stilted to avoid tricky words, I think they are great. I used them with my son as they really helped to build his confidence.

My DS1 was a reluctant reader. He started on Jelly and Bean after half term and has now read 22 of them! It's a marvel. I thought I was headed for a child not reading until seven. I agree they are a bit surreal but they build up to a reasonable story part way through. DS knows he is reading a proper book and is very happy about it. He's been far happier to read and learn other words, and spends far more time on "literacy" at home than he'd ever done before. We had fun doing words for a whole hour at the weekend - led by him. Two months ago I struggled to get him interested for more than two or three minutes. All hail Jelly and Bean .

Does anyone have a link to the official England recommendations for learning to read? TIA

What you want is the Rose Review: Final Report
www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/phonics/report.pdf

All its recommendations including that the NLS 'searchlights' strategies should be dropped and replaced by the 'simple view of reading' and that children should be taught to read using 'high quality phonics' (synthetic phonics) taught discretely (Rose Review p70) were accepted by the government back in 2006.

Thanks Maverick.

Can you give me a very quick definition of "searchlights"? TIA

Searchlights was the name given to the whole language, multi-cuing strategies needed by beginning readers in order to 'get through' the banded, predictable/repetative text books provided in class - the main strategies are guessing (using first letter, picture, syntax and context clues), memorising whole words and a little bit of analytic phonics.

sorry, that should be 'cueing'

Basically, the old 'searchlights' method encouraged four different reading strategies to be taught at the same time, right from the beginning

• phonic cues, which often meant simply guessing from the initial sound, without sounding through the whole word.
• context cues, which for the beginning readers meant guessing from the picture, and for more able readers predicting would would make sense bearing in mind what they have already read.
• grammatical cues where children guess/predict what words might say using their knowledge of syntax, or by 'reading on' then coming back to the word missed.
• word recognition and graphic cues, where children learn whole words by sight and shape, and learn graphic patterns within words.

See here for more information.

Thank you so much for that distilled information!

Jelly & Bean are fantastic, n fact I raved about thee ones I bought ds so much his teacher asked me to send some in for her to look at.

The problem I found with ORT and even Jolly Phonics was that their first books require you to know most of the sounds including double vowel rukles like oo ai ea.

With Jelly and Bean once ds started to decode consonant vowel consonant words (which he learnt to do using Jolly Phonics, he could actually read these books and the look of achievment on his fact is womething I'll never forget.

As a result of this confident he is the most advnaced boy reader the school has had for 3 years.