One of the first topics of the subject was the Synthetic Phonics method, which is a method based on learning first the sounds of the letters, and then, building the words with the sounds taught, and last year I had the chance of see how we can teach the English sounds to Spanish students.
Jolly Phonics in a class of 1st of Primary
During my second practical period, I was in a class of 1st of Primary in where the teacher knows about that method because she learned about it in a course and wants to test it in her class to see if it would works in a real classroom or if it has some weak points that the publishing house didn’t tell them, so my teacher and other teachers of the English department ask the school about the possibility of buying the material to test it in 2 classes: one in 1st of Primary and the other in 2nd of Primary.
The school accepted the proposal of the department and buy all the material required to test Jolly Phonics in the school. The material consists on a CD to work with Jolly Phonics at the Digital Whiteboard, flashcards with the sounds individually, in pairs, in trios and words formed and a mural with all the sounds by level.
Start working with the material
When the school receive the material, we start to work with it in class showing firstly the easiest sounds (s, a, t, i, p, n). First we present the letter telling them a story about the picture they see in the mural, then we listen to the song of each one and do the movement and the last thing was doing the activities the publishing house included in the CD.
Although the children like the songs and the movements, that wasn’t the real test of the material, because they can learn the songs and the movements as a game, but the aim of the department was improve the correct pronunciation of the words we saw in class in Science or in English classrooms and for this concept the use of Jolly Phonics was great, because when one child doesn’t pronounce correctly a word, we told him: “This ‘u’ is like the ‘u’ of umbrella, do you remember the movement? And how do you pronounce it?”, so they can evaluate themselves if they are pronounce it well or not and the teachers didn’t say them anything more that “remember the song, the movement and the sound”.
Finally, I post you here a video from YouTube with all the movements of each sound: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqaP19rUwz4
Hi Jaime!
Firstly, I have to say that I like your post and you’ve got me intrigued if there was any weak point with Jolly phonics at the end.
I remember when we worked on 2nd course with Jolly Phonics, each group was working with one phonic ( I was ‘V’). Later, I went to Ireland on the 3rd course to do my training period and by chance they were working with this phonics. It was useful to have seen them previously because when I arrived to the school I had to review it again but I found it easy. All cycles since first up to 6th grade, were working with Jolly Phonics and all teachers were satisfied with this method. For me it was incredible, I was teaching junior infants how to spell and pronounce the words.
After practising with Jolly Phonics in class, I find jolly phonics a good material to work with children for learning the sounds. I hope we will practice again on the next ‘practicum’
Hi Jaime!
Your post have caught my attention because I have not had the opportunity to work with synthetic phonics in my practicums yet. At the English lessons I assisted in the practical period they didn´t use it. Because of that I wanted to know how this material works in a real class.
While I was reading about your own esperience I realized that is a really good way of working in class. Whit this method children can focus better in the sounds of the words than in the words while they are reading. In my opinion is really important to work with phonems in this cycle, because they are learning to read. So, I think, this is the best moment for learn it correctly. In addiction the use of songs help them to remember each sound, and at the same time they enjoy singing and playing with this activities.
The only fault I find is that there are some words that doesn´t fit with a concret synthetic phonic. Maybe this could mistake children in the next grades of school.
Apart from that, I think your entrance is very useful for us to check if this material works well and in what situations or grades we can use it. Good job! =)