LETTERLAND ENGLISH PHONICS READING CLASSES

Letterland is a uniquely language-rich synthetic phonics programme that meets all current recommendations for effective phonics teaching while also engaging children’s thinking skills through their imaginations.

Letterland is an established programme that has grown from small beginnings 40 years ago into a system that is popular world-wide today. There is a story behind every phonic fact in Letterland. This ensures that the children use their intelligence rather than simply having to memorise phonic fact.

Children love stories and Letterland capitalises on this by introducing the letter characters in magical story format. The phonic stories build on children’s understanding and experience of the world around them and quickly turn the characters into their friends. When the characters interact to make a new sound the children can follow logic because there’s always a reason the change. One of the best ways to Learn to Read Singapore.

Simple stories about the Letterland characters help explain the full range of dry phonics facts so that children are motivated to listen, to think and to learn. Furthermore, these stories explain letter sounds and shapes, allowing children to progress quickly to word building, reading, and writing.

With Letterland being under the Synthetic Phonics category, it prioritises the learning of letter sounds and skills of blending (synthesising) and segmenting those sounds in order to read and spell words

Letterland Phonics has a chronologically ordered methodology that helps students to learn effectively. When your goal is to allow your child to Learn to Read. This will be a great choice of course.

Through Letterland stories and Letterland songs, the students are introduced to the friendly Letterland characters. Starting to say their names helps them learn the correct letter sound.

The alliterative character names serve as a temporary bridging device, leading children to the letter sound by sensitising them to the alliteration in each descriptive character name (e.g. Annie Apple, Bouncy Ben, and etc.) This strategy enables children to learn the a-z shapes and sounds quickly and securely.

Simple stories about the Letterland characters ensure correct letter formation, avoiding confusion over similar looking letters such as b and d, p and q, z and s, and n and u.

Bodily movements associated to each Letterland character forges a strong connection between the action, letter shape, and sound by developing multi-sensory (kinaesthetic-auditory-oral-visual) memory cues.

Blending and segmenting all through words is introduced very early on, covering blends, digraphs, and trigraphs.

Phonics stories give children a friendly logic for remembering all 44 letter sounds and their major spellings.

Letterland is a multi-sensory scheme that utilises all learning channels. The picture mnemonics have a high visual and auditory impact. They are designed with built-in ideational and interactive links between the Aa-Zz letter shapes, their regular sounds, and also their changes in sound. There are actions for every letter, art and craft activities, songs, poems, games, role-play and othermulti-sensory activities to ensure successful learning for every child.

Course Fees:

$240 per term of 12 sessions (Inclusive of material fees)

1. What age groups does Letterland cater to?
• Edufarm has two categories of Letterland Phonics, Star Tots Phonics which caters to toddlers (children between 18 months to 3 years old) and Programme 1 Phonics which caters to Preschoolers (children between 4 to 7 years old). Link up with us to find out other courses for toddlers.

2. Can parents accompany their children in class?
• For the students entering the Star Tots Phonics, the parents have the option to accompany their children on the first three lessons. As for Programme 1 Phonics, the parents are no longer allowed to accompany the students.

3. What are the class durations?
• Star Tots Phonics will be conducted one hour once per week for a term of twelve lessons whereas Programme 1 Phonics will be conducted one hour and a half once per week for a term of twelve lessons.

4. What is your student-teacher ratio?
• We can accommodate minimum of 4 and a maximum of 8 students to one teacher.

5. Are the students going to be separated according to their age group?
• We keep our class size small and manageable in order to make it easier for the teacher to teach a mixed age class in a semi-individualised approach.

6. How long will it take for the students to complete the entire course?
• Every student is different and as such, they have their own learning styles. The amount of time required to complete the course solely depends on the student’s readiness and learning capacity.
Star Tots Phonics students, in general, has 4 books to go through before they are able to “graduate” from the class. The same way, Programme 1 students have three different levels to go through before “graduating”. On average, it takes roughly about a year and a half (5 terms) to complete the entire program.

7. What will the students learn in class?

• Star Tots Phonics will be tackling the following scopes:

a. Letter recognition through Letterland Songs and Letterland Story Characters
b. Individual sounds of each letter of the alphabet from letter A-Z
c. Letter formation
d. Handwriting development
e. Sound-letter-object association

• Programme 1 Phonics will be tackling the following scopes:

a. Fast Track a-z
b. Blending
c. Segmenting
d. Long vowels
e. Digraphs and trigraphs
f. High frequency words
g. Word building
h. Irregular vowels
i. More digraphs and trigraphs
j. Advanced spelling patterns

And most importantly, to Learn to Read.

8. Is there a requisite for the course?
• The only requirement would be their age. Students must be exactly 18 months to enter the Star Tots Phonics class. The same could not be said for Programme 1. If the student is not yet 4 years old but is already in N2 level, they have to be able to know how to write independently without the teacher holding their hand.

9. Do you have trial lessons?
• Unfortunately we do not offer trial classes for our Singapore Phonics Classes.

10. What are the qualifications of your Phonics teachers?
• Our teachers are all locals with certificates to teach Phonics. Some of them are even childcare/playgroup teachers during day time.

11. Will replacement classes be issued if the student is on MC/holiday?
• As per practice, should a student fail to attend the lesson, that lesson shall be forfeited. Replacement classes can only be conducted when:
a. The teacher is on MC or on leave
b. Class date is on PH
c. Class has been placed on term break as per mutual agreement between all the parents in the class

12. Do you still conduct lessons on school holidays?
• Since Letterland is only an enrichment program with limited hours per week, we do conduct lessons during school holidays to maximise the learning momentum for our Singapore Phonics Classes.

13.  Do you accept payments via CDA Account? What are your payment modes?
• As Edufarm is a private sector, we can only accept payments via cash, cheque, or bank transfer.

14. What are your withdrawal procedures?
• Parents are required to finish the term and advise the teacher that they will no longer be joining. Withdrawals during middle of the term are not advised as course fees are non refundable.