ssed the children's spelling ability before the study, immediately after and a few weeks after. The children were found to have made good progress. Using the multisensory approach allowed the children to be involved in the learning task and was an important way of reinforcing what the children had already learned. They found the power point presentation stimulating and the children were engaged by the puppets. They were able to concentrate for large periods of time on tasks that required careful listening and concentration. By using this method the children became encouraged to put effort into their work that meant some real achievements were made.
This study showed that by using a more stimulating approach to teaching phonics that children became more engaged. They were offered stimulating resources that they could relate to. The children wanted to learn due to the exciting way in which these new spelling rules were presented to them. It enhanced their listening skills as they became more engaged and it improved their involvement within the learning of phonics as they were all asked to spell each of the words. This was an aspect of phonics teaching that I myself wanted to get across in the pass the parcel activity. By offering the children a new way to practice their sounds and learn new ones they became more involved and more excited. As they recognised the game it took very little time for the children to pick the game up and become engrossed in it.
Other studies have revealed that young children that are immersed in a structured, sequential, multisensory programs, made great progress in decoding skills. These multisensory approaches used clear and direct teaching of letter-sound relationships. Studies that have been carried out in clinical settings have displayed similar results for large range of abilities.
For the pass the parcel activity the jolly phonics programme was used as it was the system that the school had taken on board. This was a good system and the children had taken to it. It did; however seem to promote some confusion with some of the letters. For the letter 'i', the children are shown a picture of a mouse, whose name is 'inky', this is however, confusing for the children as when they picked out the letter 'i' from the box, the majority of them picked up the toy mouse. When asked, they knew it began with an 'm' but they instinctively went for that toy, perhaps influenced by the image of 'inky' the mouse. The Letters and Sounds, another phonics programme, avoids this issue and does not use pictures or 'actions' in the same way that the Jolly phonics system does.
Letters and Sounds is a programme used by many educational settings for the teaching of phonics. It gives a lot of guidance on how to teach the letters. The main idea is to teach the letters in a multisensory way. That letter formation should be taught from the start and as children learn a new letter sound they should also learn how to form it, starting by making movements in the air and then attempting it on a whiteboard or paper. By learning the visual appearance of the letter, the movement used when writing it and the sound of the letter all at the same time, it helps the child to remember it. The Letters and Sounds: Notes of Guidance says that mnemonics have proved to be beneficial in helping children to remember letters. It also says that teachers need to take care that children understand that the mnemonic and multisensory activities are not an end to learning letters or reading. It is important that they stay focussed on the role of letters in reading and spelling words.
The Letters and Sounds system offers further advantages. Due to the way the document is laid out it is very easy to use. It shows a break down of each of the phonics phases and what stage of reading and forming letters children should be at for each phase. Letters and Sounds is also a very multisensory programme and offers a large range of ideas and activities to do for each phase. The activities are interactive in order to keep the children motivated and engaged.
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