The Psychology of Thinking and Communication

Recommendations:

Considering the costs involved in implementing Jolly Phonics as a learning tool for children in schools, and the advantages of this tool in helping children to learn reading and writing skills quickly, a three year investment in this project is proposed for the LEA.The investment costs will be over ?150,000 for three years or ?50,000 annually for extensive implementation of this program in schools for early training of children.

Executive Summary:

The report focuses on LEA’s decisions on investments for the use of Jolly Phonics, which is a learning aid and technological tool specifically meant for children 6-14 years old. Jolly Phonics uses audio visual means to help children learn basic literacy skills and especially in reading and writing. Jolly Phonics is considered to use a child centered approach to learning through synthetic phonics. The method uses 42 letter sounds and the multisensory method is motivating for children and teachers, as students are expected to achieve better skills when they use the Jolly Phonics method. This is because children can learn the methods using audiovisual skills, sounds and different sensory methods. Considering the psychological theories of learning, the use of audiovisual skills could be most effective. Jolly Phonics is exclusively designed for children. The technique helps students to achieve skills in learning and reading, although thinking and communication are equally important. Jolly Phonics helps in increasing student motivation and children learn faster when using Jolly Phonics as a learning aid. This analysis shows the advantages of using Jolly Phonics in the schools to help teach children the basic skills of learning and examines whether the LEA should invest to help Jolly Phonics reach a large scale user base.

Background:

The report focuses on the processes of thinking, learning and communication in children and explains the various perspectives on how children could learn to read. Jolly Phonics is already used in some schools as a child centered and child oriented approach to learning new skills. It is important as the technological aid tool helps make learning easier and faster for children in schools. Jolly Phonics is made up of 42 letter sounds (Lloyd, 1992). The multisensory sight and sound method of learning motivates children and makes learning fun and easier. It also helps make teaching easier for the teachers who use Jolly Phonics as a teaching tool (Lloyd, 1992). Teachers feel happy when their students can achieve a level of learning with the Jolly Phonics technological tool for reading and writing. In multisensory methods, the letter sounds are categorized into seven groups and the sounds are presented in a specific order. The phonics technique enables children to begin building words as early as possible (Bowey, 2006). Jolly Phonics uses the synthetic phonics approach to teaching children the key skills of reading and writing and basic literacy approaches.

Jolly Phonics lays the foundation for teaching literacy over three years in school, and the tool helps to hasten the process of learning (Lloyd, 1992). Jolly Phonics serves as a facilitator for word building. It is a comprehensive basic tool for learning and complemented by other tools including Jolly Readers and Jolly Grammar (Jolly learning, 2012). These three exercises help in laying the foundations for learning, and the five key skills of reading and writing (Lloyd, 1992).

Jolly Phonics training courses are comprehensive and use literacy skills that are built upon by Jolly Grammar that helps the children to enhance grammar skills (Jolly learning, 2012). If Jolly Phonics is used as a training tool in schools for enhancing reading and writing skills among children, Jolly Grammar and Jolly Readers will have to be used as well. The implementation of these three programs will be ?50,000 annually although this program and technical tool for reading will be of substantial help to teachers and students alike.

Evidence and Literature Review:

The Jolly Phonics learning programs have been successfully implemented with the collaboration of NGOs and charities such as Absolute Return for Kids. Evidential results from these implementation case studies have shown that the Jolly Phonics and synthetic phonics programs have helped very young children in learning basic literacy skills of writing and reading (Bowey, 2006).

Children learn how to form and use these letters quickly and easily (Lloyd, 1992). Along with developing reading skills for the alphabets, with the aid of sounds, children can enhance their new writing skills. The multisensory methods used in Jolly Phonics help the children to blend the sounds together so that they can read and write new words using the sounds of new letters (Jolly learning, 2012). With the sounds of the new words, children use segmentation to identify the association of words and sounds that helps them to improve their spelling (Stuart, 1999). There are some tricky words that use irregular spellings that help the children to learn these spellings and words separately.

The tool draws on the findings from learning research as it is known now that reading and writing develop together and reinforce one another. It is also suggested that writing words the way they sound, helps children to read faster.

In a report on synthetic phonics used in an East London School for children, the BBC (2005) reported that the method was revolutionary in teaching the basic skills of reading and writing to children using sounds. There is evidence that the program encourages parental involvement and there are beneficial effects of parental praise and encouragement as this helps to improve learning skills. The Jolly Phonics program could help students to develop comprehensive grammar, reading, writing and spelling skills (BBC, 2005).

Conclusion:

Considering the benefits of this program and the learning skills that the tool helps to achieve, the LEA would be recommended to invest for 3 years before further reappraisal of the project results. The rationale for a three-year investment could be drawn from the fact that Jolly Phonics is most effective for the first three years of learning. With a three year investment from LEA, Jolly Phonics could become a successful technical tool for schools and the results of the implementation of the program have been provided by studies in schools of developing countries already using Jolly Phonics as an effective learning aid.

Bibliography and Further Information

Adams, M. J. (1990) Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

BBC NEWS (2005), Trusting Phonics retrieved Feb 26, 2013 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/4584491.stm

Bowey, Judith A. (2006). Need for systematic synthetic phonics teaching within the early reading curriculum. Australian Psychologist, 41(2), 79-84

Johnston, Rhona S. & Watson Joyce (1997). Jolly Phonics is research based – Systematic/Synthetic Phonics. Article. Literacy & Learning Magazine, Autumn issue.

Jolly learning (2012) Teaching literacy with Jolly Phonics. Retrieved February 26th 2013 from http://jollylearning.co.uk/overview-about-jolly-phonics/

Lloyd, Sue, 1992. The Jolly Phonics Handbook. Jolly Learning Ltd. Essex, United Kingdom

Stuart, Moral (1999). ‘Getting ready for reading: Early phoneme awareness and phonics teaching improves reading and spelling in inner-city second language learners’. British Journal of Educational Psychology. The British Psychological Society, 69, 587–605

References

BBC NEWS (2005), Trusting Phonics retrieved Feb 26, 2013 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/4584491.stm

Bowey, J.A. (2006). Need for systematic synthetic phonics teaching within the early reading curriculum. Australian Psychologist, 41(2), 79-84

Jolly learning (2012) Teaching literacy with Jolly Phonics. Retrieved February 26th 2013 from http://jollylearning.co.uk/overview-about-jolly-phonics/

Lloyd, S, (1992). The Jolly Phonics Handbook. Jolly Learning Ltd. Essex, United Kingdom

Stuart, M. (1999). ‘Getting ready for reading: Early phoneme awareness and phonics teaching improves reading and spelling in inner-city second language learners’. British Journal of Educational Psychology. The British Psychological Society, 69, 587–605