Setting Up the Jolly Phonics Letter Sound Poster for Classroom Use
The poster is a large laminated visual reference that displays all 42 letter sounds of the Jolly Phonics programme, each paired with its associated action and often a picture cue. It is designed to be hung at child eye-level so teachers can point to the correct sound during synthetic phonics lessons without breaking the flow of instruction. The standard size is roughly A1, though A2 and double-width banner formats also circulate. Most schools order them from the Jolly Learning website or third-party educational suppliers, and the cost typically lands between £15 and £35 depending on size and finish. I spent several years running a reception class where we used Jolly Phonics as our primary early reading scheme. One practical detail that nobody really warns you about: the glossy lamination on the cheaper posters creates a serious glare problem under fluorescent classroom lighting. If your room has overhead lights, you will find yourself constantly repositioning the poster or shielding it with your body during lessons. My workaround was to switch to a matte-finish version and hang it on a wall that didn't face the windows directly. It made a noticeable difference within the first week, and I stopped wasting three minutes per lesson adjusting its position.
What the Jolly Phonics Letter Sound Poster Covers
Each sound gets its own box with the letter(s), the phoneme symbol, and sometimes the associated action drawn alongside. The four single-letter sounds (a, i, u, m, s, p, t, n, c/k, h, r, j, v, w, z, f, th, sh, ch, y, qu) are listed separately from the digraphs and trigraphs, which is important because children need to learn them in the correct Jolly Phonics order, not alphabetically. The standard sequence begins with s, a, t, i, p, n and builds from there through groupings that are deliberately chosen to allow early blending practice. Knowing this order matters more than most parents realise when they try to use the poster at home, because pointing to the wrong sound at the wrong time can actually slow down a child's blending development. The poster also typically includes the full set of common initial letters in a slightly larger format for quick reference, along with the more complex graphemes like ou, ai, ee, igh, ow, ar, or, ur, oy, ir, ae, oe, ew, ow, air, ear, ire, oa, oa, ea, ie, y, w, qu, ng, nk, ck, ph, wh, gn, kn, wr. That last stretch gets tricky because some of those digraphs look similar on the poster, particularly ph and ff, or wh and sh. I made a habit of adding a small coloured dot next to the sounds my current class was working on, which helped me keep my place during lesson planning without constantly flipping between the poster and the teacher guide.
How to Use the Poster Effectively in a Lesson
The main value of the poster is speed. When a child misreads a word during guided reading, you need to point to the correct sound almost instantly. Fumbling with a book or a card deck during that moment costs you their attention. The poster stays fixed in the room, which means you can gesture toward the exact grapheme without interrupting the lesson rhythm. This is especially useful during the daily five-to-ten-minute phonics review session that most Jolly Phonics programmes build into the timetable. Here is what a typical application looks like in practice. You display a simple CVC word on the whiteboard, ask the children to segment it out loud, and as each child calls out a sound you point directly to the corresponding section on the poster. They see the letter combination, the action, and the picture all at once, which reinforces the multi-sensory learning that the method depends on. The poster works best when it is never treated as the sole teaching resource, but rather as a reference point that supports the hands-on work with letter tiles, sound buttons, and oral blending exercises. A couple of things that experienced teachers tend to overlook. First, the poster is usually organised in the Jolly Phonics sound order, not alphabetical order. If you have a child who already knows some letters from home or from a different phonics programme, they may try to find 'b' before 'a' on the chart and get confused. I once had a parent complain that the poster was "backwards" because their child expected alphabetical ordering. The solution was simply to explain at a parent evening that the sequence follows the phonics progression, not the alphabet, and to show them the order list from the teacher handbook. Second, newer editions of the programme sometimes shift the placement of digraphs between groups, so if you are buying a second-hand poster, check the edition date against the current Jolly Learning curriculum to make sure the grouping matches what your school is teaching this term.
Get the Full Details
Where to Get a Jolly Phonics Letter Sound Poster
The official source is the Jolly Learning website, which sells the authorised poster in several sizes. Aftermarket versions exist from sites like Amazon, Tesco, and various educational retailers, but they occasionally contain typos in the phoneme symbols or incorrect letter groupings. I learned this the hard way when a budget version I ordered had 'ch' placed in the wrong sound group compared to the official scheme, which threw off my lesson sequencing for an entire half term before I caught it. Stick to the official publisher for accuracy, especially if your school is doing phonics screening check preparation and needs the sound order to align exactly with the statutory framework. For teachers on a tight budget, the free downloadable versions that circulate on teaching forums and the Jolly Learning support pages can work fine if you print them on A3 paper and laminate them yourself. The colour quality is not as consistent as the commercial product, and some of the picture cues are lower resolution, but the phoneme content is identical. I have used both approaches and the free version performed adequately for daily classroom use, provided you do not mind spending about twenty minutes printing, trimming, and laminating four A3 sheets.
Common Problems and What to Do About Them
Velcro is the most common failure point with these posters. The adhesive backing weakens over a school term, especially in rooms with radiators or poor ventilation. My recommendation is to use repositionable mounting tape or a tension rail system rather than relying on the stickers that come with the poster. It takes about five minutes to set up and it means you can rehang the poster cleanly without leaving residue on the wall or damaging the laminated surface. Another issue is durability under heavy classroom use. Children will touch it, point at it aggressively with stick timers, and sometimes try to peel the corners if the lamination is thin. A thicker gauge laminate or a framed version will last the full academic year without curling. The unframed economy versions tend to develop curled edges after about six months in a high-traffic reception room, which makes reading the bottom row of sounds frustrating during lessons. There are scenarios where this poster simply will not help. If your school uses a different phonics programme such as Letters and Sounds, the Jolly Phonics Letter Sound Poster will confuse children because the sound order and some of the grapheme assignments differ. It is also less useful for older children who have already moved past the initial sound recognition stage, since they need word-level practice rather than isolated phoneme reference. In those cases, a high-frequency word poster or a trigraph reference sheet serves the purpose better.
The poster itself costs very little compared to the overall programme, and for the price it does exactly what it is supposed to do. It gives you a reliable, always-visible reference that keeps phonics lessons moving without constant page-flipping or card-searching. The real investment is in using it consistently and in the correct order, not in buying the most expensive version available. A mid-range laminate poster hung at the right height in the right spot will outperform a fancy framed one that ends up placed too high or in a glare-heavy corner.
