Philosophy

The Jelly and Bean books are based on children using the senses of sight and sound when learning to read, because they see words on paper or on screen, and they hear and speak words in their every day language when communicating with friends, teachers and parents.

Sounds and Symbols

In written language, symbols represent the sounds we speak. These sounds are combined into words which have meaning for us. Some languages have a single letter to represent each sound, but the English language has 44 sounds and only 26 letters in its alphabet. Combinations of letters are needed to represent some sounds. Also, some of the letters in the English alphabet represent more than one sound. This makes learning to read and write in English difficult.

Letter Sounds and Names

If we think of the first letter of the alphabet, 'a' or 'A', we can see straight away that it has two written symbols.

The first symbol is lower case on the keyboard, or a 'small' letter. The second letter is upper case on the keyboard, or a 'capital letter'. The capital letter is only used at the beginning of a sentence or the beginning of a name, and its sound is the same as the small letter. We would say 'cat' and 'CAT' exactly the same. So the capital letters do not represent different sounds and do not add to our 26 letters in the alphabet. 

If we say the words 'cat' and 'lady', we hear two different sounds for the letter 'a'; the 'short a' in 'cat' and the 'long a' in 'lady'. Each vowel 'a, e, i, o, u' has a 'short' version and a 'long' version. This adds another 5 sounds to our list, and it means that each of the vowels represents at least two sounds. 

Vowels other than the 'long' and 'short' versions of 'a, e, i, o, u' can be heard in the words 'car, down, for, boy, girl, hair, year'. These vowel sounds (digraphs and trigraphs) and all their different spellings have to be taught and learnt too for children to be able to read and write.

There are also the sounds at the beginning of the words 'ship, chip, thing'. Here, the first two consonants are combined together to give us the sounds of 'sh, ch, th'. These are different to the separate sounds of 's, c, h, t' and 'sh, ch, th' are called 'consonant digraphs' (two letters making one sound).

If we say the alphabet aloud, we say 'ay, bee, see, dee, ee, eff, gee, aich, I, jay, kay, ell, em, en, oh, pea, queue, are, ess, tee, you, vee, double-you, ex, why, zed', we notice that these are not the same as the sounds of the letters. They are something different. In fact they are the names of the letters of the alphabet.

When someone asks us to spell the word 'dog' we will probably say 'dee, oh, gee'. These three sounds are not at all like those in the word 'dog'. This means that it is very important that we do not use letter names when we first start to teach children to read.

The sounds of the letters of the alphabet and the common consonant digraphs and vowel digraphs can be heard by clicking on the red and green apple icon on the homepage of this website.

Choice of Vocabulary

We have begun by using the simplest CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) nouns (words) which children understand, e.g. 'cat, dog, hat, box'. Children know what these words mean from their everyday use of spoken language. These words are joined by simple prepositions, 'on, in, and', in phrases, in the first instance, and later in sentences.

By writing over dotted letters, singly and in words and phrases, children learn the correct formation of each letter. By writing the letters in their own handwriting, they associate the shape of each letter, and how to write it, with its sound. In this way they internalise the shape and sound of each letter as its grapheme/phoneme correspondence.

Then by blending the phonemes in real words, in the correct order from left to right, and saying the words out loud, children learn how to read the words of the English language. 

As a former teacher of Mathematics I am acutely aware of the absolute necessity for children to understand the basic building blocks of reading simple CVC words, before they move on to tackle more complicated digraphs in difficult words and sentences. However, many of the highest occurring words in the English language do not have a one-to-one letter/sound relationship.  Children have to learn words like 'said, was, the, one, two' which are not completely phonically regular. These words provide us with another reason for saying that learning to read and write in English is particularly difficult.

Historical Perspectives

The Jelly and Bean books were first published in March 2000. At first they were printed from a colour laser printer and handmade at home, each book being covered with sticky-back plastic. They were commercially printed for the first time in 2005. 

It then became clear that the books fitted the description of 'decodable books' put forward by the Rose Review in 2006, i.e. 'early reading books specifically designed to incorporate regular text, which children can decode using the phonic skills they have secured'. Over 3000 schools bought the books over the next two years even though the phonic progression of the books was not totally compatible with that of Letters and Sounds, launched in 2007.

The phonic progression of Letters and Sounds introduced one spelling for each of the 44 sounds of the English language in the Reception Year. This was at odds with the guidance of the National Literacy Strategy of 1998 on which the Jelly and Bean books were based.

The National Literacy Strategy recommended that, in their Reception Year, children were taught one sound for each of the letters of the alphabet, the consonant digraphs 'sh, ch, th' and at the same time they learnt how to read the 45 most frequently used words in children's literature. These 45 words were to be taught as 'tricky' words.

Of these 45 high-frequency words, 17 of them are phonically regular and can be made from the 19 letters introduced in Phonic Phase 2 of Letters and Sounds. These are:  'a, on, in, is, it, am, at, up, of, and, big, can, cat, dog, mum, dad, get'.

The guidance for Letters and Sounds Phonic Phase 2 also advised the teaching of the words 'I, the, no, go, to' at this stage. 

The guidance for Phonic Phase 3 recommended the teaching of the pronouns 'me, my, you, he, she, we, they' as well as the words  'was, are, all, be'.

The words 'this, with, yes, see, look, for' were also to be taught in Phonic Phase 3, but the introduction of the vowel digraphs 'ee, oo, or' and the consonant digraph 'th', made them phonically regular at this stage.

The guidance for Phonic Phase 4 recommended the teaching of 'went, come, said, like'. 

This left only 4 of the 45 words prescribed by the National Literacy Strategy not included in Phonic Phases 2, 3 or 4. These words were 'play, away, day, going'.

However, as well as the above content, the guidance in Letters and Sounds advised teachers that the vowel digraphs 'ai, igh, oa, oo (moon), er, ar, ur, ow, oi, air, ear, ure' should be taught in the Reception Year. Some of these vowel digraphs are not used in the vocabulary in the Jelly and Bean early books.

Since 2007 new stories have been added to ensure that children have easy reading material for the vowel digraphs 'ai, oa, oo (moon), er, ie, y' in the Early Vowels Combinations Series.

The books in Follifoot Farm Series 1 and 2 also provide stories with simple vocabulary containing easy vowel digraphs.

Our books and writing activity sheets comprehensively provide essential resources to help children read meaningful stories and write simple sentences in the Foundation Stage, Year 1 and Year 2 at school. 

Marlene Greenwood

Revised 22nd March 2012