A look at Jolly Phonics as a way to learn speech

 Education is an interesting topic, especially when examined in terms of how it has evolved throughout the decades. Victor Restis follows this closely as it shapes America. Today, he shares about one of the more interesting developments that many American students are learning with, Jolly Phonics.

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In general, phonics is understood as a method of teaching people how to read and write an alphabetic language. What sets it apart is its unique way of demonstrating the relationship between the sounds of language (phonemes) and the letters or groups of letters (graphemes) or the syllables of the written language.

Exposing oneself to different sounds as a basis to build on speech development, and later, language itself, is a very sensible learning framework, shares Victor Restis. However, phonics was criticized for being relatively lackluster, and many students reported losing interest in their learning of the subject matter.

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Jolly Phonics made a breakthrough by using this concept and delivering it in a way that engaged children fully through song. In Jolly Phonics, children are introduced to a song whose verses are sung in succession, each one featuring a letter of the alphabet, as well as its sound.

The creators of Jolly Phonics saw the importance of starting children early in the development of language. With actions for each of the basic letter sounds, the multi-sensory method is popular in terms of motivating children to learn the fundamentals of speech, which prepares them quite well as they take on the more complex progressions in language learning.

Victor Restis points out that various aspects of learning, namely, linguistic, musical, spatial, kinesthetic, and interpersonal learning are all present in Jolly Phonics. The full Jolly Phonics song is available here.