A Guest on Monday - Ann Williams - Maughan

Today's guest blogger is Ann Williams - Maughan from Education Takeaway. Education Takeaway provides a range of educational games, books, puzzles, magnets and charts to promote essential literacy and numeracy skills for primary school children and their parents.

Here's what Ann had to say;

"Jolly Phonics is a thorough foundation for reading and writing. It uses the synthetic phonics method of teaching the letter sounds in a way that is fun and multi-sensory. Children learn how to use the letter sounds to read and write words.

In Jolly Phonics the 42 main sounds of English are taught, not just the alphabet. The sounds are in seven groups. Some sounds are written with two letters, such as ee and or. These are called digraphs. oo and th can each make two different sounds, as in book and moon, that and three. To distinguish between these two sounds, the digraph is represented in two forms. 

Each sound has an action which helps children remember the letter(s) that represent it. As a child progresses you can point to the letters and see how quickly that can do the action and say the sound. One letter sound can be taught each day. As a child becomes more confident, the actions are no longer necessary.  Children should learn each letter by its sound, not its name. For example, the letter a should be called a (as in ant) not ai (as in aim). Similarly, the letter n should be nn (as in net), not en. This will help in blending. The names of each letter can follow later.

Parental support is important to all children as they benefit from plenty of praise and encouragement whilst learning. You should be guided by the pace at which your child wants to go. If interest is being lost, leave the teaching for a while and then come back to it later. Not all children find it easy to learn and blend sounds. Extra practice will lead to fluency in reading and help your child manage at school."

If you want to know more about the Jolly Phonics range and all the other products in Education Takeaway's range click here to see Ann's website.

Hope you've enjoyed today's guest blogger. Please feel free to leave a comment for me or Ann. We would be happy to hear from you.

If you want to chat with me directly about any parties you have coming up then just drop me a line!

Look forward to chatting with you all soon.

Max

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