Five levels of phonemic awareness in terms of abilities: 

•  to hear rhymes and alliteration as measured by knowledge of nursery rhymes 

 
•  to do oddity tasks (comparing and contrasting the sounds 
    of words for rhyme and alliteration) 

 
•  to blend and split syllables 

 
•  to perform phonemic segmentation (such as counting out   
    the number of phonemes in a word) 
• to perform phoneme manipulation tasks (such as adding, deleting a particular phoneme and regenerating a word from the remainder)    Adams (1990)

Research and experience show that it is easier and more effective for a child to be taught these skills explicitly, than to learn through storybooks alone. You can expect to see independent reading and writing developing sooner. What is more, with this teaching approach a child will be significantly less likely to encounter serious problems.

The material is suitable for school or home, and does not require any special expertise (though The Phonics Handbook is designed principally for teachers). The items can all be used together, or individually.

Jolly Phonics includes ‘look-and-say’ for learning tricky words such as ‘said’, ‘was’ and ‘the’. As children’s skills develop, they can start reading storybooks too.  [waz and the are not tricky in Spanglish].

A child will always benefit from plenty of praise and encouragement. It makes sense to be guided on the pace at which each child wants to go. If there is a phase when interest is being lost, it is better to leave the work for a while than to use undue pressure.

Below we explain the principles behind Jolly Phonics, so that your understanding of the teaching, and your ability to help a child, is much greater.

The basic skills for reading and writing are:

1. Learning the letter sounds (for reading and writing)
2. Learning letter formation (for handwriting) 
3. Blending (for reading)
4. Identifying sounds in words (for writing) 
5. Spelling the tricky words (for irregular spellings) 

1. Learning the Letter Sounds

Jolly Phonics teaches the 42 main sounds of English, not just the alphabet sounds. These 42 sounds are listed on the back cover of each of the Jolly Phonics Videos, Finger Phonics Books and Jolly Phonics Workbooks and are introduced in seven groups of six sounds. Some sounds have to be written with two letters, such as ‘ee’, ‘sh’, ‘ai’.

• Videos
• Finger Phonics Books
• Workbooks
• More than the 26 alphabet sounds
• 7 groups of six sounds for 42 sounds
• two letter sounds

At first a child should learn each letter by its sound, not its name. For instance the letter a should be called ‘a’ (as in a nt) not ‘ai’ (as in aim). Similarly the letter ‘n’ should be called ‘nn’ (as in ‘net’), not ‘en’. This will help in blending. Later the names of each letter can be introduced.

The letters have not been introduced in alphabetical order. The first group (s, a, t, i, p, n) has been chosen because they make more simple three-letter words than any other six letters. The letters ‘b’ and ‘d’ are introduced in different groups to avoid confusion.

Sounds that are commonly written in more than one way are initially taught in one form only. For instance, the sound ‘ai’ is taught first as ‘ai’ (rain), and then ‘a-e’ (gate), and ‘ay’ (day). 

Handwriting

Holding the pencil the right way - forming letters

Blending is the process of saying the individual sounds in a word and then running them together to make the word – sounding out ‘d-o-g’ and making ‘dog’, for instance. It is a technique the child will need to learn, and it improves with practice. To start with you should sound out the word and see if the child can hear it, giving the answer if necessary. Some children take longer than others to do this. The sounds must be said quickly to help them hear the word. It is easier if the first sound is said slightly louder. Try it little and often with words like ‘b-u-s’, ‘t-o-p’, ‘c-a-t’, ‘h-e-n’. There is a list of suitable words in The Phonics Handbook.

A sound that is represented by two letters, such as ‘sh’ is called a digraph. The child should
sound out the digraph (‘sh’), not the individual letters (‘s-h’), so as to blend the sounds. A word like ‘rain’, for example, should be sounded out ‘r-ai-n’, and ‘feet’ as ‘f-ee-t’. This is difficult to begin with and takes practice. Jolly Phonics teaches the 42 main letter sounds, whether they are represented by a single letter or a digraph.

You will find it helpful to be able to distinguish between a blend (such as ‘st’) and a digraph (such as ‘sh’). In a blend the two sounds, ‘s’ and ‘t’ can each be heard. In a digraph this is not so. Compare ‘mishap’ (where both the ‘s’ and ‘h’ are sounded) and ‘midship’ (which has the quite separate ‘sh’ sound).

Some words in English have irregular spelling and cannot be read by blending, such as ‘said’, ‘was’, ‘one’. Unfortunately many of these are the most common ones. They have to be learned separately, and are called the ‘tricky’ words.
 

4. Identifying Sounds in Words

The easiest way to know how to spell a word is to listen for the sounds it contains. Even with the tricky words, an understanding of letter sounds can help.

Start by having the child listen for the first sound in a word. Games like I-Spy are ideal for this. Next try listening for the end sounds, as the middle sound of a word is the hardest to hear.

Begin with simple three-letter words such as ‘cat’, ‘hot’. A good idea is to say a word and tap out the sounds. Three taps means three sounds. Say each sound as you tap. Take care with digraphs. The word ‘fish’, for instance, has four letters but only three sounds, ‘f-i-sh’.

The Jiglets help in identifying the sounds in words. Rhyming games and poetry also help tune the ears to the sounds in words. Other games to play are:


L I N K S

	1. Phonemic Awareness" by Myrna T. McCulloch Phonemic Awareness. " Tom is confused and feeling quite helpless. He is trying to write a report to tell what happened, and what he learned during yesterday's science project. He is excited ..." http://www.riggsinst.org/phoneme.htm 2. Structure of Phonemic Awareness The Structure of Phonemic Awareness Philip B. Gough and Kevin C. Larson University of Texas at Austin Hallie Yopp California State University, Fullerton There can no longer be much doubt that a ... http://www.psy.utexas.edu/psy/klarson/recife.html 3. Teachers.Net Meeting - Early Childhood/Elementary - Phonemic Awareness Activities Tuesday, June 8, 1999 Early Childhood - Elementary Meeting Phonemic Awareness Activities With Sandy/K/MO Read a discussion concerning the importance of PA that took ... http://www.teachers.net/archive/ec060899.html 4. Phonemic Awareness     What is phonemic awareness? Phonemic awareness is the understanding that our speech is made up of a series of sounds that can be manipulated, that is, we can play with those sounds and make ... http://placerhills-usd.k12.ca.us/SHS/phonemic.htm 5. Phonemic Awareness: An Important Early Step in Learning to Read ERIC Digest #119 discusses the concept of the awareness that spoken language is made up of discrete sounds and why this concept is so important to early childhood educators. http://www.indiana.edu/~eric_rec/ieo/digests/d119... 6. CURRICULUM ASSOCIATES: CLUES for Phonemic Awareness CLUES for Phonemic Awareness, new from Curriculum Associates, Inc., promotes phonemic awareness through sight, sound, and feel. http://www.curriculumassociates.com/publications/... 7. Phonemic Awareness What Does it Mean EducationNews.org The World's Leading Source of EducationNews 7 Days a Week October 9, 2000 Free On-Line Subscription  Daily Articles    Bulletin Board    ... http://www.educationnews.org/phonemic_awareness_w... 8. Facts on research on the teaching of phonics Educators agree that children learning to read texts written in English need to learn that there are relationships between letter patterns and sound patterns in English, and that children need ... http://www.heinemann.com/hbbc/08894f2.html 9. Literacy Volunteers of America, Inc. - Learning Disabilities Literacy Volunteers of America, Inc. is a national, not-for-profit organization, managed by professionals, which delivers literacy services through a network of more than ... http://www.literacyvolunteers.org/about/ld/awaren...
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Tuesday December 21, 1999

Scientists have shown that a language creates its own geography within the
human brain in a discovery which could have promising implications for
dyslexia research.

Uta Frith of University College, London, reveals in Nature Neuroscience
today that differences in the structure of languages lead to different
strategies for pronouncing words, which may explain why dyslexia is a common
problem in English-reading nations, but relatively unknown in Italy.
Italian is simple and beautiful to sing, not just because of the alternation
of consonants and vowels but because the rules for pronunciation and stress
are consistent.

English, on the other hand is notorious for its inconsistencies - words such
as cough, bough, dough and tough are classic examples - and George Bernard
Shaw remarked bitterly that a word like "ghoti" could just as easily be
pronounced as "fish": gh as in tough, o as in women, and ti as in nation.
Brain scans taken while Italian and English-speaking volunteers looked at
and read out words in their own language showed subtle differences in
activity in precise locations in the brain.

Prof Frith found that when asked to read words and pronounceable non-words,
English speakers took longer to begin reading each word, and were even
slower when they had to apply a pronunciation to a made-up word.
The fact that the native Italian speakers were quicker on the draw was
consistent with the idea that Italians could rely on a sure set of rules for
translating letters into sounds, whereas the English-speaking volunteers had
to work out what the meaning might be before they could settle on a
pronunciation. 

There would seem to be various contrived test that could be undertaken to make a point.  Can i.t.a. or Spanglish compensate for this?  Can those who know the system read non-words easier and pronounce words quicker.

Guardian staff and agencies
Tuesday December 21, 1999

            The rise of the internet is threatening to Americanise the English language. Widespread use of the world wide web is leading to more  and more Britons substituting "center" for centre, "program" for  programme, and "color" for colour, according to John Simpson, chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

            "As we approach the new millennium there is a clear drift
towards a use of American English. The internet has certainly played a big part.  "Email and the web have led to a huge increase in the written word, but much of what people read on it is from the United States, so it is inevitable that they adopt some American words and spellings."

            In New Zealand English teachers have said they were considering            accepting US spellings. A memo circulated to secondary schools this month by the New Zealand council of the Association of Teachers said many pupils were already using American variations.  It said that as the internet became more pervasive, American spellings would be come more common and some children might
struggle  to reconcile the discrepancies - particularly as computer spellchecks often rejected British spellings. The memo also claimed that American spellings were more logical and phonetic.