What the Jolly Phonics Sounds And Actions Document Actually Is
The Jolly Phonics Sounds And Actions Document is essentially the official reference sheet from Jolly Learning that pairs each of the 42 phonic sounds with a specific action, a song, and a description of how the sound should be articulated. It was created by Sue Lloyd, who developed the synthetic phonics programme in the UK during the 1980s, and it serves as the backbone for teachers who use the method in classrooms and for parents who are trying it at home. You will find different formats floating around depending on where you look — PDFs, printable posters, laminated cards, audio tracks. The core content stays the same across all of them. Each sound gets a short action. The sound /s/ uses a hissing snake motion with your finger. The sound /a/ is a big stretched-out arm motion. These actions exist because young children remember motor movements better than abstract symbols. That part is well established in the literature. What the document also includes is the order in which sounds should be introduced, the groupings they use, and notes on tricky sounds like the digraphs.
Where to Find the Jolly Phonics Sounds And Actions Document
You can get the official version from the Jolly Learning website. They sell packs that include the full set of posters, flashcards, and the song CDs. There is also a free sounds and actions PDF available on their site if you just want the reference sheet. Various teacher resource sites host mirrors or reprints, but those are unofficial copies and sometimes the action illustrations are slightly off. I always recommend the official PDF because the artwork matches exactly what the training videos show, and mismatched visuals confuse kids who have already seen the real thing in class. The free official PDF is roughly 2MB. It covers all 42 sounds in the standard sequence. It is organized into six groups of seven sounds each. Group 1 starts with s, a, t, i, p, n. Group 2 introduces m, d, g, o, c, k. Group 3 moves to e, u, r, h, b, f, l. Group 4 covers the digraphs: sh, th, ay, igh, ow, ure, er. Group 5 has ch, j, oi, ee, ar, ou, ur. Group 6 finishes with ir, ue, oe, ie, y, z, qu.
How the Method Actually Works in Practice
The way the sounds and actions combine is the critical piece that most people gloss over. You do not just teach the sound in isolation. You teach the sound, you model the action, you play the song, and then you blend. The blending step is where the whole system either works or collapses, and it is the part that gets rushed the most in homes and under-resourced schools. When I was helping my neighbour's kid with reading last year, we ran into a specific problem that the document does not address directly. The child could produce every sound correctly when pointed to, but blending them together produced nonsense words instead of actual words. We were trying to read "m-a-p" and he was saying "mmmmm-aaa-pppp" and stopping there. He could not carry the sounds forward into a continuous blend. The workaround was surprisingly simple but not obvious if you only have the printed document. We switched to whisper-blending. Instead of loud isolated phonemes, we whispered the sounds together slowly, almost like murmuring "mmmmaaaap" in one breath. Within three sessions he cracked it. The official materials mention blending but they do not give you enough detail on what to do when a child physically cannot cross the threshold from segmented sounds to continuous blending. That whisper technique is something I picked up from a mentor who had been teaching Jolly Phonics for over a decade. Another thing worth noting is the order of introduction matters more than people realize. The six-group sequence is deliberate. Sounds within each group are chosen so they do not share letters that would confuse a beginner. If you jump ahead to Group 4 before the child has fully internalized Groups 1 through 3, you create overlap problems. The sound /ch/ shares letters with /sh/ and /tch/ looks similar to /ch/ in writing. Kids will mix them up if you introduce them too close together. Most teachers I know slow down Group 1 to about three weeks. That feels long if you are worried about falling behind, but it prevents a pile-up of confusion later.
Get the Full Details
The actions themselves are not gimmicks. They serve a real purpose in multi-sensory encoding. A child who does the hissing hand motion while saying /s/ creates a stronger memory trace than a child who just hears the sound repeated. Studies in early literacy consistently show that multi-sensory approaches outperform purely auditory ones for beginner readers, and Jolly Phonics leans hard into that principle. The document makes this easy because every sound has a pre-designed action you can follow. You do not need to invent your own, which is good because improvised actions tend to be inconsistent between teachers and that inconsistency slows progress.
Common Pitfalls and Where the System Falls Short
There are real limitations to the method and the document does not always help with them. One major issue is the treatment of "weird words" or high-frequency words that do not follow the phonics pattern. Words like "the", "was", "said", and "come" appear early in reading books but they cannot be sounded out using the standard Jolly Phonics rules. The programme addresses this by calling them "tricky words" and recommending a look-say approach for those specific words. This works okay in theory but in practice it creates a cognitive whiplash for children. One day they are blending sounds, the next day they are told to memorize the word whole because it is "tricky". Some kids get confused about when to blend and when to just recognize the word. I have seen children default to guessing based on the first letter instead of applying either strategy correctly. Another limitation is the handling of certain regional pronunciations. The Jolly Phonics sounds are based on British English pronunciation. The /r/ sound, the vowel in "bath", and the treatment of "qu" as a single sound rather than /k/ plus /w/ can clash with American or Australian English where those sounds differ. If you are using the programme outside the UK, you may need to adapt. I knew a teacher in Texas who switched the /r/ action and sound slightly to match her students' natural pronunciation, and it made a noticeable difference in how quickly the children could blend words with /r/ in them. The document itself is a reference tool, not a lesson plan. It tells you what the sounds and actions are. It does not tell you how to structure a 20-minute session, how to pace the introduction across weeks, or what to do when a child struggles with a specific sound. For that you need the teacher guidebooks and training materials, which are separate purchases. Having just the sounds and actions PDF without the accompanying guidance is like having a recipe ingredient list without the cooking instructions. It is useful, but incomplete on its own.
If your goal is purely to get a printable reference sheet for quick classroom use, the free PDF is sufficient. If you are implementing the full programme, you will want the complete kit with the songs, the training DVD or online modules, and the assessment materials. The cost is significant but the outcomes for most children using it correctly are measurably better than traditional non-phonics approaches, particularly in the early years. The Programme has been studied extensively in the UK and the results, while not universally positive, lean clearly in its favour for beginner literacy. One practical tip that is not in the document: laminate the sound cards. You will drop them, spill drinks on them, and fold the corners within the first month. Lamination costs about fifty cents per card and extends their life by years. Also, keep the actions consistent. If you use one hand motion for /m/ today and a different one tomorrow, the child loses the motor memory anchor. Consistency matters more than creativity at this stage.
