At Offley Endowed Primary School, we follow the Jolly Phonics Systematic Synthetic Phonics scheme. Jolly Phonics is a fun and structured way of teaching children to read and write. Children learn the 42 main sounds of English using actions, stories, and songs to help them remember. They practise writing the letters for each sound, blending sounds together to read words (e.g. c-a-t), and breaking words down into sounds to help with spelling. Alongside this, they learn “tricky words” such as was or said that can’t be sounded out in the usual way. Once they know a few sounds, children quickly begin reading simple decodable books, giving them the chance to apply their phonics skills straight away. The scheme is taught in daily sessions, keeping it active, engaging, and fun, while steadily building children’s confidence as readers and writers.

Here is a Jolly Phonics video showing how to pronounce the 42 letter sounds:

https://youtu.be/sz3s5lbuRNw