In It’s a piece of cake we use Jolly Phonics to teach children aged  5 to 8.

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Jolly Phonics is a child centred approach to teaching writing and reading skills, developped by UK teachers. Children learn the 42 letter sounds in a specific order, not alphabetically, so they are able to build words easier and faster. They learn with songs and actions, which is very motivating for them.

The letter sounds are split into seven groups:

Jolly Phonics is a useful method to teach reading and writing to young learners, and it works very good with dyslexic students. This program teaches 5 skills:

1. Letter sounds: this includes alphabet sounds as well as digraphs such as sh, th, ai and ue.
2. Letter formation: using multi-sensory methods, children learn how to write the letters.
3. Blending: they learn how to blend the sounds together to read and write new words.
4. Segmenting: they identify the sounds in words, improving their spelling.
5. Tricky words: tricky words have irregular spellings, so children learn them separately.

You can see an example of Jolly Phonics songs and actions by clicking on this image:

Do you want to know more about Jolly Phonics?