Philosophy

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

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 English letters in the 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 it's 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 'baby', we hear two different sounds for the letter 'a'; the 'short a' in 'cat' and the 'long a' in 'baby'. 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.

Other vowel sounds can be heard in the words 'car, down, for, boy, girl, hair, year'. These sounds and their spellings have to be taught and learnt too.

Then we have the sounds in 'ship, chip, thing'. Here, consonants are combined together to give us the sounds of 'sh, ch, th'. They are called the '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 are teaching 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) that can be represented by a picture, e.g. a cat, a dog, a hat, a box. Children understand these pictures from their everyday use of spoken language. They have seen them in books, on television and on computer screens. They know what these pictures mean.

By writing the symbols for these words (nouns) under the pictures and bringing them to the attention of the children, we are moving from something the children already know to something new. This close association helps them to realise that words are written in symbols. When they have learnt these symbols they can blend them together to say the words. They can also copy the symbols to write the words.

By saying the simple nouns as whole words, and by splitting them into their constituent sounds, 'c-a-t, d-o-g, h-e-n, r-a-t,' children are taught to listen and identify the sound corresponding to each letter. Then they are taught how to blend the sounds together (from left to right all through the word) to say each word aloud. Once children know some of the letter/sound correspondences they can tackle new words that cannot be easily illustrated.

We have joined the words (nouns) by the simplest connecting words (prepositions), e.g. 'on, in, and' to make them into phrases, e.g. 'a cat on a hat, a rat in a bag, a dog and a cat'. These connecting words (prepositions) are not real objects like 'a cat'. They are concepts that children learn by association. We cannot draw a pictue of 'on' by itself. We need two objects, one object on the other object, to be able to illustrate them.

However, once children have learnt the correspondence between the sound of a letter and its symbol they can use this knowledge to work out how to say words that do not have associated pictures, e.g. 'on, in, and, it, am'. 

By using single letter cards, each with a picture on the reverse, children learn each letter/sound correspondence individually. Then the children can put the letter cards in the correct order (left to right) to make/spell whole words.

By writing over dotted letters, in their correct formation, children can learn to write each letter with their own hand. They associate the shape of the letter and how to write it with its sound. In this way they internalise the shape and sound of each letter. 

These three activities,

1. learning letter/sound correspondences by splitting whole words into sounds and blending the sounds together again to say the word,

2. writing over dotted letters to learn the shape of each letter,

3. using the knowledge of the letter/sound correspondences to write and say new words

form the basis of the process of learning to read and write.

They are the first building blocks that give children a secure foundation on which they can build their knowledge of reading and writing.

Now that we have sound files on our website, teachers and children can click on the red icon, with a picture of an apple on it, accessed from the homepage, and they can choose to hear the sounds of the letters of the alphabet and examples of their use in simple CVC words. They can also see and hear the more complicated digraph combinations as another option.

As a former teacher of Mathematics I am acutely aware of the absolute necessity for children to understand the basic building blocks of learning to read, before they move on to more complicated words and sentences. However, in many of the highest occurring words in our language the one-to-one letter/sound relationship does not apply. The words 'to, do, no, go' spring to mind immediately. How do we explain these words to children?

My own philosphy is that we tell children that these are 'tricky' words and they simply have to remember them. They will come across these words so often that they will soon know them very well. These high-frequency words are incorporated into our books and worksheets gradually and slowly in line with their introduction in the phonic phases of Letters and Sounds.

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 have been commercially printed since 2005. 

It then became clear that the books fitted the definition 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'. However, they were not completely compatible with the phonic progression of the 'synthetic phonic' programme Letters and Sounds launched in 2007.

The synthetic phonic strategy of introducing one spelling for each of the 44 sounds of the English language in the Reception Year was at odds with the guidance in the National Literacy Strategy of 1998.

The National Literacy Strategy recommended that, in the Reception Year, children were taught one sound for each of the letters of the alphabet, the consonant digraphs 'sh, ch, th' and the 45 most frequently used words in children's literature. These 45 words were to be taught as 'tricky' words and children simply had to learn them.

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'.

Letters and Sounds guidance for Phonic Phase 2 also advises the teaching of the words 'I, the, no, go, to'. 

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

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

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

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

Letters and Sounds has delayed the introduction of these 4 words until Phonic Phase 5, which is to be taught in Year 1, but they are still in the Jelly and Bean early books.

However, as well as all the above work, the guidance in Letters and Sounds advises teachers that the vowel digraphs 'ai, igh, oa, oo (moon), er, ar, ur, ow, oi, air, ear, ure' should also be taught in Phonic Phase 3 in the Reception Year.

Jelly and Bean books in the A Series, A Extra Series and A Digraphs Series do not use all the vowel digraphs of Phonic Phase 3.

Since 2007 we have managed to include 'ai, oa, oo (moon), er, ar, ow, ie, y' in our new Follifoot Farm Series and our Early Vowel Combinations Series, but children will not encounter the trigraphs 'igh, air, ear, ure'  until they reach the Long Vowel Series and the English Vowel Series, both written for children past the Foundation Stage.

Political perspectives

In the autumn of 2010 the new Coalition government, via the Department for Education, revised the set of core criteria  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 such programmes.

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 because we recommended learning phonically irregular words as ‘sight words’, and that this does not encourage the application of phonic knowledge.

Then, in March 2011, the Department for Education launched an initiative 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 been sent to all schools in England with Key Stage 1 pupils.

Marlene Greenwood

November 2011  

Revised 7th December 2011