About Us
Santina, our trainer at Jolly Education and Training, is a highly accomplished teacher with over 30 years’ experience and is well known in education for her work in synthetic phonics in Australia and around the world. She is passionate about reading and writing success with students and has been training teachers on the benefits of structured synthetic phonics for many years.
Santina implemented Jolly Phonics, a structured synthetic phonics program with her students in 1996. Her students acquired the alphabetic code along with the skills of blending and segmenting. Upon seeing the impact synthetic phonics had on her students reading and writing, in 1998 Santina became a Jolly Phonics trainer. Santina received her training by the author, Sue Llyod, in the UK. She is highly regarded by her fellow Jolly Phonics trainers and often mentors other trainers at the annual conference.
Santina continues her passion as a teacher while also mentoring teachers in the best practice that is involved in reading in the early years.
Jolly Phonics is a multi-sensory synthetic phonics program which makes learning to read and write achievable for all children. Jolly Phonics incorporates actions, jingles and stories for each of the 42 sounds which makes learning fun for both the child and teacher. Jolly Phonics teaches children the five essential skills needed for reading and writing. These skills are:
- Learning the letter sounds
- Learning letter formation
- Blending
- Identifying sounds in words
- Tricky words
Jolly Phonics has been scientifically researched. The research shows that children taught using a synthetic phonics program perform at a higher level in reading and writing than those who are taught using a whole language approach. Below are links to the most popular research.
Jolly Grammar is the next stage of the Jolly Phonics program. Jolly Grammar is an all-rounded program that involves the systematic teaching of spelling, grammar, punctuation and vocabulary. Jolly Grammar enables children to develop accuracy in spelling and writing through the use of colours and actions. The Jolly Grammar program explores:
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Spelling rules
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Punctuation
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Parts of speech
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Dictionary use
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The tenses: past, present and future
Jolly Grammar currently provides a grade 1-6 scope and sequence to teaching spelling and grammar.