Hands Up for Fun Grammar Lessons! 🙌 – Jolly Grammar Online Marathon

Chris Jolly is Managing Director and owner of Jolly Learning Ltd. He founded the company in 1987 and published the first part of the Jolly Phonics reading and writing scheme in 1992.
Chris’s aim from the start was to reach around the world.  Many countries have adopted it for all state schools, including The Gambia, Nigeria, Seychelles, Oman, Fiji, Trinidad and Tobago, St Lucia and Antigua. It is also used by most schools in the Republic of Ireland, and by most private schools in cities such as Accra, Lagos, Cairo, Mumbai, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong. The marketing and training given has taken Chris to over 80 countries around the world.
From an early stage it became apparent to Chris that the need for teaching literacy extended beyond the initial teaching of reading and writing. Children needed to learn accurate spelling, to develop vocabulary, dictionary skills, punctuation and grammar. This led to the creation of the Jolly Grammar range which takes children to a high proficiency by the end of the primary years. Interestingly, both phonics and grammar are now incorporated in national curricula around the world, and for primary teaching, something that was not so before these programmes were published.
Chris was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters in 2014 from the University of Uyo in Nigeria, and an Honorary Doctorate of Science from the University of Bristol in 2017. In 2019 he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the IPG, a publishing trade association.

Sara Wernham, co-author of the world’s successful systematic phonics teaching programme and author of the Jolly Grammar child-friendly materials will facilitate our brief look at some of the concepts taught in Jolly Grammar, why they are taught and how to use them.
I was fortunate to start my teaching career in a small school in in the northern most reaches of Suffolk in the UK, where Sue Lloyd was in the process of developing ‘Jolly Phonics’. Sue and myself very quickly formed a strong and enduring partnership.
I am passionate that reading and writing English is taught in the simplest and most effective way possible. We have collaborated on the Jolly Phonics programme (for a great many years now!) producing a scheme that stretches from nursery through to Year 6, as well as a range of decodable readers and other materials.
As a class teacher, I taught across all year groups in the school, and spent the last 5 years as SenCo. As well as continuing to work with Jolly Learning, I currently provide teacher training and support to schools and teachers, quite literally all over the world.

Silvana Serbanescu (Jolly Star Learning Centre) is a UK Jolly Phonics professional Trainer, experienced ESL teacher and manager of the independent educational company Jolly Star Learning Centre.
She conducted tens of workshops across Romania and the Republic of Moldova on developing children’s reading and writing skills using Jolly Phonics, a fantastic synthetic phonics programme trusted by teachers and loved by children across the world which has been validated by the British Department for Education as an effective systematic programme.
She also provided the teacher training in the pilot programme conducted by the Romania’s Ministry of Education and Jolly Learning UK in various counties across Romania.

Melly Chausheva (Phonics Journey) has been teaching in bilingual and international schools in Bulgaria for 10 years. She is a highly qualified teacher in the field of early years, preschool and primary education.
Melly considers that education should be seen as a fun activity for all the participants- students, parents, and teachers. Having used different methods in her practice, she believes that engaging children in play activities allow them to explore and expand their knowledge.
Striving to help young ESL-learners to reveal their potential fully, she has gained valuable knowledge as a qualified Suggestopedia and Thinking- Based teacher.
Following her passion to raise Literacy standards in English language, she becomes a professional Jolly Phonics Trainer for Bulgaria.

Yvonne Dalorto is a British teacher and former Head Teacher of a British school in Spain, specialising in language acquisition, synthetic phonics, S.E.N and literacy skills for Early Years and Primary age children.
Since 2004, Yvonne has been living in Spain and working in the bilingual teaching environment and a global teacher trainer for many areas of education and coaching. She is also the author of infant and primary educational books MELP (Macmillan Early Learning Path 2011 and 2014), nominated for the British Council ELTons awards and has contributed extensively to Early Years and Primary editorials and school curriculums.
Yvonne works extensively with schools, consulting on how to use the curriculum effectively and maximising resources. Yvonne is also an Official Jolly Phonics trainer, having used the method since 1998 and she has travelled extensively training teachers and consulting in schools internationally.
Yvonne continues to work closely with teachers and schools, with a focus on E.S.L, using synthetic phonics with children with SEN and Social and Emotion learning (S.E.L).”
B.A. Education, B.A. Early Years Education, M.B.A Childhood, Cert. Early Years and S.E.N, CACHE 6 Management and Playwork, City and Guilds TEFL and Adult Education.

Dr Sylwia Dzeren-Glowacka (KIDS TALK Language Centre for Children, Lodz, Poland):
Before I started teaching children at my language centre, I worked at the University of Lodz, Poland. I have a PhD in English linguistics and conducted seminars in Cognitive Linguistics, Communication and Teaching English as a Foreign Language In 2015 I was accepted to the Jolly Family of Trainers and since then have been able to learn from the best. I left university to run the growing language centre and trainings for teachers all over Poland.At annual conferences in my country I try to convince teachers of English that it is time to change the way we teach grammar because not only is there another way of doing this, but also that this way finally works.