KARACHI, Feb 12: Two hundred forty teachers from 50 plus schools attended a workshop on Jolly Phonics conducted by a phonetics specialist Ms Anne Mckeefry, at a local hotel yesterday.

The programme was organised by Jolly Learning Limited and Publishers Marketing Associates who are based in Castlewellan, North Ireland,

Introducing participants to the phonics method, Ms Mckeefry said Jolly Phonics, also called linguistic phonics, had a fun and multi-sensory approach to teach children English.

The child first learned the main 40 letter sounds and was then taken through the stages of blending and segmenting words to develop reading and writing skills.

There was a storyline, action, song or jingle for each sound to make the learning process enjoyable and easier. From the very beginning, children were taught how to put these sounds together so they can both read and write words.

The phonics order had been specifically designed and with the very first six letter sounds (s, a, t, i, p, n), it was possible to make more than thirty words, she said.

“Developed by Sue Lloyd in the 1990s, Jolly Phonics is named after its publisher, Christopher Jolly. It’s a synthetic method with which the child recognises not only the letter sounds, but also how to put them together and make new words. Eighty per cent of English words can be worked out in this way and the same is true for writing these words. In this manner a child learns thousands of words by learning the main 40 letter sounds.

Mckeefry, who has 30 years teaching experience, said Jolly Phonics is an important discovery. In the UK, it is the leading phonics method and over 90 per cent of the primary schools have adopted this method. “It has been proved to be the best way to make children read and write and has a 99 per cent success rate. It can be translated to other languages.

The programme can also be introduced in early primary classrooms with minimal resources.—By Our Reporter