The Phonics Handbook: A Handbook for Teaching Reading, Writing and Spelling (Jolly Phonics)

I teach young people at home who have difficulty reading and writing and this book was a short-circuit to strategies for learning. It summarised for me the child's experience of dyslexia and gave practical exercises for dealing with it. The approach is inclusive and non-judgemental, emphasising the need for building blocks for learning from the toddler to the young adult. The last two-thirds of the book is photocopiable work-sheets for use with children in a home or school setting. They are easily adaptible for older children who may have missed out on this kind of help when at reception stage. The book gives an overview of the phonics method and shows that it is dervied from the sort of strategies that children who struggle to read devise for themselves. This I found to be true and so universally helpful.

This book is a great place to start teaching you child the essential first letter sounds, and also doubles up as an acitivity book with loads of pages to photocopy and enjoy. For older kids it has tons of first words for spelling.

I came across Jolly Phonics while teaching in the UK. When our school received a kit from Manchester, I grabbed it and used it with my grade one learners. They enjoy the association of the pictures and the associated sound and actions. When they get stuck on a sound, the actions speak for its self. They do the action and then practically jump out of their skins when they shout out the sound. It has really helped me as I was at a loss of what to do with learners whose listening skills were not fully developed to cope with the sounds and the letters. I would recommend it to any school or parent who is concerned with the learning of their children.

I have been using the Jolly Phonics range to teach my son to read. I am dyslexic myself and wanted my son to read well and love reading. I used the Jolly Phonics songs and finger phonics to teach my 2-4 year old the sounds and how to form the letters with his fingers. I then used this handbook to allow me go onto the next step. The parts written for the parents are excellent as it explains in detail how to teach your child to sound out words, blend them to make word and then read! I really did not have a clue about what to do but after reading the parents section I was full with confidence in teaching my son.

Starts off with learning "SATNIP" where you have a sheet for the child to colour in for each letter. AS you can see with these first 6 learnt letters they can learn to read simple words like....sat, nip, tip, pin, tin, tap, pan etc. The section near the back there are 18 list of words each list having 10 words. The list starts off with easy words that your child can sound out after they have just learnt the first 5 letters.. They are writing exercises list too and other read/writing games within the book.

Hi,

My daughters school has Jolly Phonics as part of her curriculam in school and it was amazing to see how quickly she understood words and is able to read and write in such a short time. Unfortunately my son's doesnot follow the Jolly Phonics system in school, he is preschooler. so i thought i would teach him at home. And book has proved to be very valuable, as i am happy to say he has almost finished one workbook in 2 weeks. And my daughter (5 years) has been a big help in teaching him.

Rgs,
Devishree