The Jelly and Bean Story
The first Jelly and Bean stories were written in the summer of 1998 just after the introduction of the National Literacy Strategy.
The Reception Series (now the A Series, A Extra Series and A Digraphs Series), the B Series and the Long Vowel Series were first published as full colour A5 books in March 2000.
Prior to that they had been used as A3 teaching resources in two local schools. Since then there have been minor revisions to some of these stories, but their overall phonic structure has remained the same. The letters of the alphabet are introduced a few at a time in simple words that children understand.
The most common words of the English language are introduced gradually and systematically so that children can successfully read each book as they pass through each stage of the phonic progression.
By 2004 other series of books were added for children to practise blending consonants together and to learn the other vowel combinations of the English language. Worksheets were added for children to reinforce their reading skills with writing practice so that by 2006 there were a total of 110 books, 12 volumes of worksheets and CD Roms available for whole class teaching.
In 2006 the Rose Review was published and the use of a systematic phonic approach became the recommended method of teaching reading in the Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 in schools in England.
Later, in 2007, the Labour government published its own synthetic phonic teaching programme ‘Letters and Sounds’. Jelly and Bean books fulfilled the criteria set out for decodable reading books and these became popular with both teachers and pupils over the next couple of years.
But ‘Letters and Sounds’ reclassified the phonic progression of the National Literacy Strategy into Phonic Phases 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. The main change came in Phase 3, where one spelling (grapheme) of each of the 15 vowel sounds (phonemes), (not including the short vowels ‘a, e, i, o, u’) had to be taught. Suddenly the vowel phonemes /ar/, /ow/, /oi/, /or/, /ur/, /er/, /ear/, /air/, /igh/ and /ure/ were to be taught in the Reception Year of the Foundation Stage rather than in Year 2. The Jelly and Bean books needed changing to accommodate this.
The More Vowels Series was revised to make the vocabulary simpler and the stories shorter. The new series was called the English Vowels Series. However, this revision was not enough to provide simple reading material at the Phase 3 level. Shorter stories were needed.
It was at this time that it became possible to bring the farm setting of the books to life. The farm was planned and mapped out so that the stories were set in the farmyard and fields surrounding Follifoot Farm. The vowel graphemes ‘ar, ow, or, er’ were used in words connected with the farm, e.g. farm, cow, tractor, water.
However, there was still a need for even shorter stories, so the Early Vowel Combinations Series was devised next, followed by a new series for Phonic Phase 2, the First Words Series.
Since then Follifoot Farm Series 2 and Series 3 have been published, as well as two new books for Phonic Phase 2 which complete the new AB Starter Pack for children just learning their first words.
Then in the autumn of 2010, another political initiative was launched. The new Coalition government, via the Department for Education, revised the set of core criteria they used to define a systematic synthetic phonic programme. All the publishers on the old list were invited to submit their products, together with a self-assessment statement, for scrutiny by independent evaluators. Whilst Jelly and Bean books have never constituted a phonic programme, they have always been used as decodable reading material to support others including ‘Letters and Sounds’.
The books and the self-assessment statement were submitted to the Department for Education in November 2010. In April 2011 we were informed that we had not demonstrated to the evaluators that we met the core criteria, in particular, because we recommended learning phonically irregular words as ‘sight words’, and that this does not encourage the application of phonic knowledge.
The Department for Education launched another initiative in March 2011 in which they proposed to provide match-funding of £3000 per school to buy products and training to support systematic synthetic phonic programmes, provided the products adhered to their revised core criteria. Since we had already failed to meet these, we did not apply to be a supplier and we are not in the catalogue that has gone out to all schools with Key Stage 1 pupils in England.
Marlene Greenwood November 2011