Why use phonics? Teaching English using phonics teaches children to read by recognising the sounds that makeup words instead of memorising whole words or learning letter names. For example, cat has three sounds ‘c’ ‘a’ and ’t’ and chair has two sounds ‘ch’ and ‘air’. This method is now part of the national curriculum in …
What is phonics? Together We Learn has been partnering with Jolly Phonics to train Ethiopian teachers to use the phonics method of teaching English. Instead of memorising words, children are taught the 42 sounds of English, which include the 26 alphabet sounds plus sounds such as ‘ch’ ‘sh’ ‘ee’ and ‘ay’. Teaching children these sounds …
An Update on our Early Years English Improvement Project Teaching English makes you think a lot about how words are spelt and how they sound. Words like tough, bough, cough and dough look similar but sound completely different. And starting from the other direction, words like sight and site sound the same but don’t look …
Teacher Training: Fenta’s Story In a national assessment, the Ethiopian Ministry of Education found that six in ten grade 4 students have a ‘below basic’ proficiency in English. This is a problem because when students move to secondary school, all lessons are taught in English. Many teachers themselves struggle with English as their second language …