Introducing the sounds

In Step 1, these sounds are introduced:

Why introduce them in this order?

This order ensures that words can be formed and read early on.

The first six sounds - s a t i p n - are often referred to as satpin. They are easier to distinguish from each other than other sounds and you can create a large number of words using just these sounds. Give it a go! Remember, only use the sounds s, a, t, i, p & n (hint: if you put the a & i together you will have a different sound /ai/). You can use the sounds more than once in each word. Challenge yourself to move beyond 3 letter words like, pit/sat/nap. Can you think of four letter words, five letters words, words with more than 5 letters? Record your words in the comment box below.

You might notice that digraphs are introduced early. It's important to use the correct language when introducing digraphs. "A digraph is when two letters represent one sound."

Pace is important!

It is recommended that you introduce one sound per day. Each day, introduce the next sound and practice/review all of the previous sounds that have been introduced. This ensures students continually hear all of the sounds and practice blending and segmenting using a wide range of sounds (the range gets wider every day!). See the lessons on blending and segmenting for more information about this! You use this page in the Interactive Whiteboard program for daily practice of the sounds.

As you introduce a new sound, present a variety of words to students to practice identifying the sound and blending and segmenting using that sound combined with other sounds already taught. Control these words, so that the only sounds in the words are sounds that have already been covered. The Jolly Phonics Word Bank lists a whole range of words for this purpose.

The Jolly Phonics Word Book is very handy for this!

Using the Interactive Whiteboard to introduce to letter/s and sound

• discussing what they see in the image (as above)
• getting students to practice saying the sound
• talking about the sound you are introducing - can students see anything that has that sound in it?
• use the spotlight tool to focus on the letter (more about the tools in the Interactive Whiteboard lesson)
• play the story for students to listen to
• listen to the song and jingle
  

Introduce the action

The actions are a fantastic and easy way to bring the multi sensory aspect into your Jolly Phonics lessons. Combine introducing the action with the song for each sound (available on the interactive whiteboard program, or on the Jolly Songs CD).

The full list of actions are included in the file section at the endof this lesson.

Building engagement when introducing the letter/sound association.

Our aim here is to ensure that students are thinking about the sound when they see the letter and, thinking about the letter when they hear the sound. They will need lots of opportunities to ensure this becomes automatic.

Try some of these ideas to build engagement with this skill:

Write the letters on any surface - the teacher or another student say a sound and the student/s identify the letter associated with that sound. Here's a few teachers have made:

Spin the wheel, say the sound it lands on. This class were looking at alternatives, however this can be easily adjusted to show only the sounds and letters you have covered! Thanks Poh Keng for this idea!

In the activity below, students choose a picture from the pile, said a word associated with the picture (what it is) to see if they could hear a targeted sound. If they could hear it, they placed that picture into the tin with the tick. If not, they placed the picture in the tin with the cross. Afterwards, the teacher could check the tins to see if the student was able to identify the targeted sound.

To increase the challenge, a range of sounds can be used to label the tins, like this:

Anything that asks the student to match the letter to the sound will work! Be as creative as you can! The template below provides another way to do this.

Getting students to practice the sound at home

Practise, practise, practise! Our aim is for students to move their understanding of letter sound association from their short term memory to their long term memory to enable instant recall. This means they need to practice it a lot!

Sending the sound home each evening is one way to encourage students to practice at home. You could do this by sticking the letter into a little sound book each day, like this one:

Alternatively, you could use one created by SPELD SA. It contains information about the action, how to form the letter, some images for students to identify the sound in and some words to blend and segment! It's available for purchase here

Alternatives

It's a great idea to display some alternative ways of writing the sounds early on. Students will find reading the alternatives easier than writing them at first. You can display the alternatives using the resources below, or by being creative and making your own!

This poster is an easy one for the classroom. Students will likely recognize the most common way to write the sound (which is the first way they will be introduced to) and connect it to the next most common ways, which are shown in the same tree. These individual student strips are also available:

The resources below will be helpful when introducing the letter sound association.

Where does this fit into the Australian Curriculum?

Under the Language strand, you will find Phonics and Word Knowledge. This is where the content descriptors link to Jolly Phonics. The content descriptor relating to letter sound association is underlined in this snapshot.