Three Little Pigs

The story of the three little pigs is a perfect tale for children in the four to five years old age group. It tells a story of three pigs who build a house each, with each pig choosing different materials ranging from lightweight straw through to the robust bricks; all of which are to protect them from the big bad wolf with various outcomes due to the materials picked. The story is simple and straight forward with concepts that are easy to understand, it gives the children's suspense, leaving them wanting to know what will happen next therefore keeping them engaged and listening and learning the entire time.

Using stories such as the three little pigs aids young children in carrying those first steps toward acquiring a passion for literature

along with becoming competent in the usage of words and storytelling. Children’s learning of oral and written language are intricately linked together (Fellowes & Oakley, 2014) and by providing these kinds of experiences it fosters enjoyment and engagement with words, sounds and symbols, all of which are precursors of the more complex structures known as stories (Birckmayer, Kennedy & Stonehouse, 2008).
The story is open ended, meaning that the children can be involved in the story and understand meanings suited to their own level of learning, with educators modelling the activity emphasising the language required for the story while the children observe, they help to cement the optimal levels of learning development (Fellowes & Oakley, 2014).
The weaknesses of using this story is that if the original version is told it depicts a much harsher reality than the one currently known and use, and it may cause fear in the children making the only learning outcome of the story one of fear of bad things knocking at your door (Soden, n.d.). Another weakness is, as with most fairy-tale, it is a very male dominated story originally, the pigs were all originally male along with the wolf.
Jolly Phonics is a language game that has multiple levels for various age groups and abilities, for the ages of four to five-year-old children, Jolly Phonics phase two is the most appropriate level. It provides a fun, child centred approach to teaching literacy using synthetic phonics and multi-sensory methods using both verbal sounds and actions to help children to remember each letter sound (Jolly Phonics, n.d.).
One of the biggest strengths of this literacy game is the way it is presented, the use of song, actions and sounds of each letter engages the children on multiple levels, deepening the learning outcomes they receive. This activity feels more like a fun game rather than learning, making the children more willing to participate as it is fun not a tedious task.
Teaching phonics aids in a child learning to spell as it involves breaking down those spoken words into each sound that is heard in the word.

Those who can spell well are generally better readers as spelling and reading share a fundamental knowledge base and phonics emphasises spelling patterns which then become familiar with reading. Thirty-seven percent of English words can be spelt using phonetic rules (Blevins & Chambliss, 2017).

As all children are different and not all children are at the same level of learning, there is a weakness of this method of teaching literacy. If a child has undeveloped verbal language, they may have a reduced ability to think in words i.e. inner speech, and both issues will in turn affect the child’s ability to sound out and repeat words, therefore, those children may instead need to rely on visual recognition and memory of whole words rather than phonics (Lynch, 2018).

Another aspect needing to be considered is that to be effective, the program must go closely together with high quality teaching. If the phonics program is of high quality, but is not taught properly, it is most likely to be just as ineffective as a well taught low-quality program. If proper monitoring is not in place to make sure adequate learning outcomes are governing the quality of the given program being taught, there is little use for phonics education

anyway.
Lack of cognitive clarity from the children being taught can also hinder the effectiveness of teaching phonics and adults can often take it for granted that the children are aware of the vitalness of what is being taught to them, however, this is not normally the case. Many children have very little idea of what they are expected to do or the reason why they would want to participate. Unless the children can experience the outcome and be able to watch educators modelling the processes necessary to gain the outcome, it will make learning phonics quite difficult (Samuels, 2011).