Jolly Phonics

At St. Julian’s Primary, we use Jolly Phonics to teach the five key skills for reading and writing. Jolly Phonics is a fun and child-centred approach to teaching literacy through synthetic phonics. Each of the 42 letter sounds have a specific action which the children practise each morning in Nursery and Reception. The multi-sensory approach helps to reinforce the the letter sounds. There are seven groups of letter sound (shown here).

The sounds are taught in a specific order (not alphabetically). This enables children to begin building words as early as possible.

Jolly Phonics teaches children the five key skills for reading and writing. The programme continues through school enabling the teaching of essential grammar, spelling and punctuation skills.

The five key skills which Jolly Phonics helps to teach are…

1.Learning the letter sounds

Children are taught the 42 main letter sounds. This includes alphabet sounds as well as digraphs such as sh, th, ai and ue.

2.Learning letter formation

Using different multi-sensory methods, children learn how to form and write the letters.

3.Blending

Children are taught how to blend the sounds together to read and write new words.

4.Identifying the sounds in words (Segmenting)

Listening for the sounds in words gives children the best start for improving spelling.

5.Tricky words

Tricky words have irregular spellings and children learn these separately.

The Letter Sounds

s

a

t

i

p

n

c/k

e

h

r

m

d

g

o

u

I

f

b

ai

j

oa

ie

ee or

z

w

ng

v

oo

y

x

ch

sh

th

qu

ou

oi

ue

er

ar

All Sounds

This video has all of the sounds and the song lyrics for you to follow.