Fortunatelly, things have changed since I started learning English two decades ago, and after doing some research about Synthetic Phonics, I came across a website that caught my attention. It is called ‘Teach Your Monster to Read‘, and it is intended for native speakers of English aged 4 and above. In this case, and even though there could be some pupils who were not able to understand all that is being said during the game, it is quite intuitive, so  I consider that it could be used with Spanish speakers from the First and Second Cycle of Primary.

The first thing that pupils will find about this game is that they have to design their own avatar, whose physical features are highly personalisable, with the possibility of adding new complements along the game.  This could help children feel motivated and forget that they ‘have to learn’, and just learn while having a good time. Moreover, each stage adds a new type of game, so the children can choose among a variety of mini-games that makes it more interesting as the level goals are achieved.

Whenever a new sound is introduced, the game provides a word beginning with that sound, but instead of doing it in the written form, which could be difficult for early readers, it is done using an easily-recognisable picture like the one below (‘r’- like in ‘rain’).

In my opinion, it is a simple but effective way of learning English phonics. Based on Synthetic Phonics, phonemes are presented following the frequency rate that is typical of these methods, but there is no feeling of repetitiveness, and when more than one phoneme is presented at a time, they form a real word, there are not just random groupings of letters.

Another positive aspect about this proposal is that, whereas there is a version that can be downloaded at a price for tablets, it is free of charge for PC and laptops. Not having to spend extra money so the pupils can use it using the computer lab or at home, is great.

The teaching of both phonemes and graphemes is basic for teaching reading and writing, and it represents one of the biggest challenges to which past, present and future teachers, especially the ones working with Literature in any language, have to deal with. Depending on how the teacher prepares and leads the lesson, including the methodology carried out, the materials and resources used, the way of managing the situations, etc.; the teaching-learning process of phonics may be really motivating, fun and successful, or, on the contrary, it could become a really difficult task for both the teacher and the students, with boring lessons, confusion and even empty learning.

As we have seen in class, there is one method that teachers can follow, called Synthetic Phonics, which is aimed to teach reading and writing basing on how letters or groups of letters correspond with sounds -the link grapheme-phoneme-. As some of my classmates have already explained and demonstrated in their posts, like Susana’s or Miguel Ángel’s, this method has its advantages and disadvantages, and there is a really current debate between those experts that agree with it and consider it really useful and those that totally reject it.

In order to go further with the knowledge on it and be able to have a supported opinion about it, I decided to do some research about the method and about the most popular material to work Synthetic Phonics, which is called Jolly Phonics; and I found something that I considered it was worth it to share with you, hoping that you find it interesting too and useful for your training as future teachers: the five skills –taken as stages-, worked with Jolly Phonics, that are necessary to learn to read and to write.

To begin with, the first stage is the learning of the 42 main letter sounds –including digraphs, like oo, and the different sounds that they can make-, which is carried out through the connection between each sound with an action to represent it. The sounds are learnt following a particular order, from those simpler to those more complex.

Secondly, once children have learnt the sounds, they start the learning of letter formation, which involves children learning how to form and write letters with their pencil, and, as it occurs with the sounds, the learning goes from the most basic and used forms (i.e.: c, which could be used later to make d) to the most complex shapes.

Thirdly, the next stage consists on blending the individual sounds together to make up new words. During this process, it is important to know that we have to be aware of the fact that digraphs, despite of being represented by two letters, they are just one sound.

Then, the fourth stage is called segmenting, and it involves the identification of sounds in words, from the simplest (like cat) to the most complex. In this stage, tapping out the sounds while saying them may help (four taps = 4 sounds).

And the last stage is the learning of tricky words, which are those common words with an irregular spelling that cannot be read by blending. Some methods to learn them are: Look, Cover, Write and Check; Say as it sounds, Mnemonics, etc.

Finally, I would like to share with you the post written by Jaime, which presents a real experience in a classroom working with Jolly Phonics.

Hope you have found this first post interesting!

Rocío Hidalgo.