How to teach jolly Phonics step-by-step

Phonics is one of the most important skills children must master before they start school. It’s also one of the hardest subjects to teach. But don’t worry – we’ve got you covered!

What is jolly phonics?

Jolly phonics is a new method to teach children how to read by teaching them the sounds of the letters. The kids don’t take the traditional 24 letters of the alphabet. Rather, they take 42 graphemes.

how to teach jolly phonics step by step

What is a grapheme?

graphemes are the sounds made by the letters. This is the table for graphemes in English:

We can classify graphemes in this chart into four categories:

• single-letter graphemes (sounds we shape by one letter)
• Digraphs: sounds that we present by two letters (like tie)
• Trigraphs: Sounds that we present by three letters (like lower)
• Quadgraphs: Sounds that we present by four letters (like cough)

Teaching graphemes happens according to phases:

Phases take your child from learning letter sounds to reading fluently.

1. phase 1
2. phase 2
3. phase 3
4. phase 4
5. phase 5

• Phase 1:

In which he knows the sounds of nature. This is a kind of pre-reading skill for toddlers. Actually, We may not go through it in kids’ activities as we are more interested in phase 2.

• Phase 2:

In this phase, the focus is on the perception of sounds. Not all the 42 sounds are introduced directly. Only sounds made by one letter. Initially, The kid is supposed to be able to see the letter and define its sound (decoding). At the same time, the kid has to know how to form the letter and write it (encoding). In addition, a little blending happens in this stage for some CVC words. Lastly, they learn some highly common tricky words like ‘go’ and ‘the’.

• Phase two has 5 sets learned in order:

• Phase 3: 

We introduce the children here to a higher level of difficulty or what we can interpret as sounds that are formed by two different letter sounds coming after each other like /ch/, /oa/, /ai/.Also, we teach children more tricky words like /was/, /me/, /you/ or /they/. Finally, they also learn how to read and blend some CVC words made by these phase 2 and 3 graphemes (graphemes are all the 42 phonemes either made by one letter or digraphs or trigraphs).

• The graphemes of phase 3:

• Phase 4: 

We expect children now to be more comfortable with blending CVC words. So, we will introduce them now to consonant clusters. These are two consonants following each other like /ng/, /nt/, /st/, /br/. Finally, The students will practice blending CVCC words.

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• Phase 4 phonics letter sounds:

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Phase 5 phonics letter sounds:

Here the kids take the full year 1 in learning almost the final touches of reading and spelling. At first, we will start teaching them here that some graphemes like /ow/ have two different sounds like in snow or cow. As a fact,  They will learn how not to get confused with that the more they practice and get familiar with the words they use regularly. They will also take some trigraphs like /igh/, and quadgraphs like /ough/ which the children may not be easily able to spell correctly if asked until they use them a lot.