Here's a pdf that guides you through how to complete the three tasks involved in the 4th Skills Certificate.

1. We want to see you model sounding

2. We want to see an activity that you use to practice sounding with your learners.

3. We want to see how you conduct dictation to assess sounding.

Here's a pdf that guides you through how to complete the three tasks involved in the 5th Skills Certificate.

1. We want to see how you teach your learners to identify the 'tricky part' of a word.

2. We want to see how you teach 'Look, Say, Copy, Cover, Write and Check' to your learners

3. We want to see an activity that you use to revise tricky words.

·      Focus on the sounds that your learners need to practice

·      You should use flashcards, songs, games or other activities that revise sounds

·      Use ‘targeted listening’ to ensure you know which learners need correcting

·      Give your learners opportunities to ‘think, talk and share’ their answers

·      Ensure you pronounce the sound of the day correctly

·      Practice telling the story – it should be told, not read

·      The story should highlight the sound it is introducing and the accompanying action.

Feedback on this video:

I really liked how you told it from your personal experience! That helps learners to engage. I liked that you used code switching to ensure that your learners followed the story.
A great, adaptation of the story, but that still leads to the sound and action.
It was great that you introduce the sound and action within the story and “It came to me running /qu/, /qu/, /qu/…”
I loved the humour that you injected into the story! I’m sure that your learners will remember their teacher getting chased by a duck! Great to see you practicing the sound and action with your learners. Great engagement questions: “who has heard this sound from a duck before?” – This is brilliant! Well done.
The only think I would add to this is targeted listening.  Maybe you went on to do it? After introducing the new sound to your learners, go around your classroom and getting different groups of children to repeat the sound back to you to ensure that they are pronouncing this new sound accurately.  

·      Say the sound and show us the accompanying action

·      We’ll let you know it there are any sounds/actions that you need to practice

·      Size: Is it a small, tall or fall letter?

·      Starting Point: Where does it start and finish?

·      Describe: Talk through its formation (Use the scripts in The Jolly Phonics Teaching Aid)

·      Use lines on the board to help show size and position.

·      Give ‘thinking, talking and sharing time’ to ensure maximum participation.

·       Use ‘safe words’

·       Identify each sound in a word and mark with a dot (or ‘sound button’). Don’t forget that a digraph is one sound, but two letters

·       Say the initial sound ‘loud and proud’, with the following sounds ‘quick and quiet’

-       Mime actions for the children to blend corresponding sounds together

-       Pointing to sounds for your learners to blend and make words

-       Blending song

-       ‘Show me’ blending activity

·      Help learners identify the individual sounds within the ‘safe words’, holding up a finger for each sound as it is identified

·      Use the activity in the ‘Pupil Book 1’ to count the sounds within the safe words.

·      Encourage your learners to write each sound that they can hear in the safe word to write the whole word.

-       Using a letterboard to change letters to make new words

-       Sounding Catch

-       Lose a sound

-       Sounding bounce game

·      Call out 3 or 4 ‘safe words’ (one at a time, putting them into the context of a sentence) for learners to write in their books.

A good starting point is to get the learners to read the word using the letter sounds (w-a-s) and then tell them how the word is meant to be pronounced ("woz"). With the learners then identify which letters are trying to trick us by saying a sound that we wouldn't expect.

·     To complete this task show us how you help your learners identify the tricky part in some tricky words.

·      Guide your learners through each of the steps and show us their exercise book.

·      Look: Get them to look at the tricky word; which part is trying to trick us? Ensure your learners pay particular attention to the size of letters (tall, small or fall letters).

·      Say: Saying a word how it is spelt can help children remember the tricky part! However, learners should spell the word out using the letter names.

·      Copy: Get your learners to write out the tricky word you want to learn, making sure you copy it correctly (saying the letter names as they copy it).

·      Cover: They should cover up the word, and then try writing it from memory. Think about its shape and they should quietly say the letter names as they write it.

·      Check: Compare the spelling they wrote from memory with the way it should be written. Did they get it correct?

·      It is worth your learners repeating the last two steps a couple of times, to see if they can write the word correctly 2 more times.

Remember that Tricky words focus on spelling words using letter names and not letter sounds

Task 5.3

·      Demonstrate a game song or other activity that you use to revise tricky words that you have taught your class.

The teacher will call out a sound that the fly has landed on and the two children at the front have to rush to hit the correct sound.

Targeted Listening:

When you get your whole class to chorus sounds, it can be hard to tell if all your learners are pronouncing the sounds correctly or not.

Targeted listening is where you move around the classroom getting parts of your class to chorus, whilst the rest of your class remains quiet.

This way you are able to identify any learners who are not pronouncing the sound correctly so that you can give them guidance.

Too often, we can call upon the same 'fast learners' to answer questions that we ask in our class. But many of our learners might just need a little more thinking time or lack the confidence to offer their answer.

Think, Talk, Share:

Think: Ask a question to your class. If only a few of your learners raise their hands, maybe the others need some 'thinking time'. Pause for a few extra seconds to give your learners thinking time.

Talk: Once everyone has had a chance to think of their answer, encourage your learners to talk to a neighbouring classmate about their answer. This will give your learners a chance to test if their answer might be right and it gives you a chance to listen in to a few answers as you move around your classroom.

Share: This is where your learners tell you their answer. They might mime an action, or you might hear 3 or 4 people's answer, but a key point is that you are not simply calling one of the few hands that have gone up, but hopefully more of your learners are engaged and taking part in the lesson.

1. We want to see how you revise sounds at the start of your lessons.

2. We want to see how you teach a new letter sound through a short story and action.

3. We want to see if how you are pronouncing the 42 sounds and actions.

1. We want to see how you introduce a new letter formation.

2. We want to see how you practise letter formation with your learners.

3. We want to see how you mark handwriting practice in your learners' books.

1. We want to see you model oral blending

2. We want to see you model blending

3. We want to see an activity that you use to practice blending with your learners.

Teachers will often get their learners to chorus the pronunciation of sounds, however, when everyone is calling out together, it can be difficult to hear who is pronouncing the sounds well and who needs correction.

Targeted listening is where you move around your classroom, getting groups of learners to pronounce sounds whilst the remainder of your class stays quiet. This helps you to identify who might need intervention to pronounce the sound correctly.

- Good enthusiasm from you and your learners.

- I like that I heard you correcting yourself (alound, around)! Well done

- I really like how you made sure the game included all the learners, not just by everyone singing the song, but also the whole table saying what the sound is (and action!)

- Your /i/ song is from the app not the book – it is the British story!

They are standing and dancing (which means we're not waiting for children to come out to the front of the class). They are focussing on the key sounds that the teacher wants the learners to revise.

Learners are doing the action alongside the sound.

The learners could also show the flashcard of the letter sound they are doing the sound and action for.

Start with the letter size, its starting point and then describe the formation.

NB:

* For print, remove references to 'Flick'

* Pre-cursive writing uses flicks to help learn how to join letters

Over the course of a few weeks, we want to go from us modelling blending like in this video, to expecting learners to identify the sounds by themselves and blend the words in small groups, pairs and, eventually, individually (using think, talk share).

• The teacher personalises the story. Telling the story as if it happened to her

• She uses code switching effectively to ensure that her learners followed the story well.

• She brought in a pot and groundnuts and a bowl! That’s excellent! It was great to see the reaction of the learners as the groundnuts had disappeared - you can see them engrossed in what the teacher is doing.

• She asks questions of engagement and comprehension of the learners - seeing if they can predict what is happening in the story (who stole the groundnuts?)

• She clearly introduces the letter sound of the day, /i/.

• She introduces the sound and action during the story telling

- You do well to give them thinking time first, but I don’t think it hurts to give them talking time too…. It would be more important to give them talking time than so much sharing time…. Once they start showing you the answer, from that point, any slower learners that don’t 'show you' straight away are not going to be thinking of the answer anymore, they are going to be looking around the room for an answer!

- After getting their answers, it is good to tell them what the correct answer is and to model the blending of the word for any slower learners that need that help.

Ensure that learners are talking through the letter formation as they practice

This is a great example of telling the story to a learner at home.

1. The teacher talks through the song lyrics - making sure the learner know the words.

2. The teacher uses code switching to link the song to the story and ensures that learners understand the song lyrics

3. The teacher makes sure the learners are saying the sound correctly and that they are doing the action when singing the song

4. The teacher plays the song using the app

5. Remember that the app is from the UK and therefore the Jolly Song lyrics might not match the contextualised stories. If the lyrics don't match, get the tune from the app, but use the song lyrics from the Jolly Phonics Teacher's Book

The teacher tells the story well with great expression. I like how the story is personalised and you can see that it really draws the interest of the learners.

She uses code switching effectively to ensure the learners understand the story (which is essential if we want them to remember the sound).

The story clearly introduces the sound of the day and its action, which is modelled a few times in the story telling (to make it even better, she could have asked the learners to practice the sound and action during those parts of the story too!).

I like how she uses think, talk share to get learners to think about words that contain the sound of the day (phonemic awareness).

This is all talked through and then written on the board for learners to see.

Blending using flashcards

- Getting the learners to identify the sounds as you add them to the letterboard, and then guiding the learners through blending.

- Well done on correcting yourself from we make sound to we make word

- I love that you started with words with 2 sounds and then built up to words with three sounds.

- I like that you were blending words bit by bit.

- A way to extend this is to put up a word like 'out' and then ask the learners how can I change this to be the word ouch? Which sound should I remove and which sound am I adding? This is a higher level skill that gets learners to think about spelling words not just reading.

- talking about the size of the letters and therefore where are we starting the letter formations from. There’s not many hands up here, so it might be best to give them thinking time, and talking time before you ask them to share their answers.  

- You demonstrate the writing on the board, whilst talking through the letter formation.  
- I like that you continue to talk it through with the learners as you demonstrate the formation and that the learners write in the air as you write on the board.  
- you continue to refer to the starting point too! That's good. Well done.  
- I like that you pretended to make a common mistake and talked through what was wrong about it.  
- you have your back to the learners to make sure you are writing with the correct orientation, it would be great to learn the mirror writing so you can watch your learners as they are writing in the air.  

- Watch out for ‘frick’ when it should be flick. 
 
*This is a passed task – 2.1* 

- The teacher is encouraging learners to talk through the letter formation.

- When a mistake is spotted, the learner is asked to restart and is given specific guidance to help her improve - writing as the teacher talks through the formation (encouraging the learner to talk it through too).

• We want to see what your learners are doing for handwriting and how you are marking it.

• As each learner’s handwriting is likely to be inconsistent, ask learners to identify their best examples to show that they understand the difference between correct and incorrect letter formation. If learners can recognise what a good letter looks like, they are more likely to repeat it consistently.

He then thinks of a 'safe word' (a word that only contains sounds that have already been taught) and spells the word by points to the letter sounds in the correct order.

Learners say the sounds and try to blend them together to hear the word.

It is good to mix this with 'think, talk, share'

Think: The first time you point to the sounds learners don't say anything, they just think by themselves

Talk: The second time you point the the letter sounds, learners are able to whisper their answer to a neighbour and see if they have the same answer

Share: The third and final time the teacher points to the letter sounds, learners join in saying the letter sounds and then blend the word together.

Select 5 learners from each team to come and play the game and get them to line up on either side of the front of the class.

Use a sound chart/banner or write some previously taught letter sounds on the board.

The first player from either line holds the stick/fly swat and faces the chart.

The teacher tells the class that there is a fly flying around the classroom and that it will land on a letter sound. They will then do the action of that sound and the class will say what the sound is. The learners with the fly swat they are going to listen to the sound the class says and try to be the one that kills the fly (identifies the letter) first.

They then give the swat to the next child in the line.

The team with the most 'kills' wins.

The teacher gets the learner to say the sound and do the action, ensuring that all learners are involved and not simply watching others learn.

When they hear someone making an error, they correct them and get them to repeat the sound after giving them guidance.

I liked that she spent more time practicing the harder sounds. I also like that she sped the activity up as learners sat down!

I thought this was brilliant!

She's observing and giving instant feedback. Encouraging learners to talk through the letter formation and reminding learners of the starting point and size of the letter to make sure they are positioning it correctly on the lines in their books.

The teacher starts with an engaging question – who knows basketball? It’s already getting learners picturing the sport involved in the story.

The teacher uses code switching effectively making sure that all learners are understanding the story.

The sound and action are brought out of the story early and repeated a couple of times within the telling. It can be fine to get the learners to copy the sound and action when you do it.

The teacher uses think, talk share to get learners to think of words from the story with the sound of the day – We think the learners could have been given more time to think and get asked to think of (up to) 3 /b/ words from the story?

We liked that the teacher was moving around the classroom getting answers from your learners.

Think of changing any one sound to make a new word. Thinking time given.

Missed out talk step (the reason this is important is that it gives meaning to the thinking step that each child has just done. Just take 1 minute to permit them to share their word with a neighbour and see if they have the same word – if they don’t which sound have they changed?)

Got new word from one child.

Getting the rest of the class to figure out which sound has been removed.

Class show /p/ sound and action – very good.

You get give them thinking time to think about which sound they have replaces the /p/ with and then got them to ‘show you’ after a countdown. Learners show /s/ sound and action.