By blending tactile play, songs, and tiered lessons, her students now spot sounds in everyday life (like the “G” in “Logan”) and ask for Jolly time. Skeptical at first, Melissa now urges teachers: “Start small—your kids will fall in love with it.”

“Your kids are going to fall in love with it.”

Summary

Melissa Wood, a veteran special education teacher at Summit Academy-Elmwood, transformed her inclusive preschool classroom with Jolly Literacy’s multi-sensory, structured approach to literacy—empowering non-verbal students (via AAC devices) and advanced learners alike to happily master phonics. By blending tactile play, songs, and tiered lessons, her students now spot sounds in everyday life (like the “G” in “Logan”) and ask for Jolly time. Skeptical at first, Melissa now urges teachers: “Start small—your kids will fall in love with it.”

(Bonus: Parents are even texting photos of kids practicing sounds at home!) 😊

Melissa Wood’s preschool classroom at Summit Academy-Elmwood is a vibrant mix of learners: neurotypical students, non-verbal children with autism, and kids who’ve just turned three. For years, she struggled to find a literacy program flexible enough to meet all their needs—until Jolly Literacy turned her skepticism into joy.

The Challenge: “We Had No Literacy Foundation”

Summit’s integrated classrooms lacked a structured literacy program. Melissa juggled outdated materials and the pressure to teach decoding skills to students with wildly varying abilities. “We were winging it,” she says. “Kids wanted to learn, but I didn’t have the tools to meet them where they were.”

Why Jolly? “Just Try It.”

Summit’s leadership knew they needed a program rooted in the Science of Reading, but most options were designed for kindergarteners, not preschoolers. “Our kids start at two years and nine months old,” says Melissa. “We need something that we can use for our younger rooms and our four-year-olds.”

Jolly Learning’s scope-and-sequence, designed to work in PreK-5 settings, was the answer she needed for her preschool classroom.

When leadership at Summit introduced Jolly Learning, Melissa was skeptical. “The materials felt overwhelming, and this is a lot of information for our students,” she recalls. But leadership was insistent: "I really think these integrated kiddos could benefit from it. Let's start as early as we can. Just play with it and see what you think."

So Melissa started small: digital stories, songs, and tracing activities. Soon, her students surprised her. “Using it, it’s working. I can see it every week.”

“Jolly’s real strength is its ability to meet the kids at their level.”

Implementation Made Simple: How Jolly Meets Every Student’s Needs

Given that her classroom is a mosaic of learners with a wide variety of verbal abilities and neuro-divergent learning styles, differentiation isn’t a buzzword for Melissa, it’s a daily necessity. “I used to lose sleep over how to adapt lessons,” she admits. “With Jolly, the tools are already there.”

Here’s How Jolly Makes Differentiation Easy:

Multi-Sensory Options for All

• Verbal learners: Chant sounds with puppets and sing along with letter sound songs
• Non-verbal students: Use AAC devices* to tap sounds and letters on iPads

• Kinesthetic kids: Trace letters in sand, draw them in the air, shape them with clay

  Don’t forget to make connections when you can. Melissa uses familiar props with her students, like pretending to blow out candles for the ‘P’ sound!

We have a literacy area where we have little magnetic letter tiles. We practice in our Play-Doh center. We have letter stampers. We try to incorporate as much kinesthetic practice as we can throughout the day just to reinforce all that we’re learning, and our parents love it.

Structured, Tiered Literacy Lessons—Zero Prep

“...because I did not specialize in reading, I was like, I don't know if I can teach this. I don't want to teach them wrong. I don't want to do it wrong and set them up for failure.”

If you’re an educator, you know this feeling well. Teachers don’t always get to choose the grade-level they teach, and with every new grade level comes new learning for educators. Teaching is a unique field this way. Because the instructional content is new every day, the feeling of being “new” at teaching lasts all school year. And as a result, many teachers struggle to feel comfortable and capable as they deliver new content and skills.

That’s why Jolly provides all the materials educators need to confidently teach foundational literacy skills for whole class, small group, and individual instruction. With online tutorials and a full suite of instructional materials embedded into the Jolly Classroom platform, the learning curve is short and sweet. {{graphic: list of Jolly materials}}

“But I feel like with this, once you get it, it just makes sense. We have books that include different activities, like crafts, which really helps us expand on what we're teaching instead of just the Smartboard or just the online kids app for them to play with. We really get to expand it into all facets.”

Melissa and her aides now feel confident in their literacy teaching, with Melissa often leading whole ## group instruction before she and her aides break students into small groups for additional structured literacy practice.

For example: Group 1: Focus on one sound (e.g., “S”) using Jolly’s tactile flashcards Group 2: Blending practice (e.g., “S” + “A” = “SA”)

Bonus: The Jolly Classroom platform includes assessments, which means teachers can easily adjust student groupings and practice activities based on easy-to-read progress.

In the beginning, I was like, I'm going to fail these kids. I don't want to do that. And now, all of us—even my aides and building subs—are much more confident.

Results: “They Get It—and They’re Proud!”

Melissa is excited to continue using Jolly to support her students. Here’s why:

Measurable Growth and Palpable Confidence

Preschool students and tests don’t really go together. (Can you imagine?) But that doesn’t mean skills aren’t assessed. Jolly provides assessments to help measure learning and growth. And after trying the assessments herself, Melissa found that the vast majority of her young students were retaining what they had learned.

Perhaps even more powerful than traditional testing is what her students are doing with their learning.

“When they show you that they remember a sound we learned three weeks ago, you're like, Wow, they actually remembered they did that. And we'll put up the different sounds that we're learning in the hallways and walk through the school, and they can point them out and even say them outside of the classroom in the hallway. They'll go up to a supervisor and say, ‘Look! The sss sound is right there,’ and I'm like, ‘Yeah you're right.’

“And even those non-verbal kids, they're carrying their device and they can look at it and they can find it in their device and push the button for the sss sound to show me. And they’re seeing it everywhere.”

Caregivers Are All In

Parents aren’t just noticing progress—they’re part of it. Melissa sends home simple ‘sound of the week’ activities, like spotting the ‘S’ sound at the grocery store. “I have parents say things like ‘We got home and so-and-so was talking all about the letter G today and what sounds it makes. They’re talking about guitar and showing me how to make the letter with their hand!’ They’re just as excited as the kids.”

Joyful Moments

All of that growth and confidence is creating real joy in Melissa’s classroom. That G sound? More than one student is excited to talk about it.

“We just learned the G sound, and one little boy named Logan goes, "G. For Logan." I was like, "It's in your name." Yes. I go, "It's right there." And he's like, "Yeah, it's right there. That’s MY name!”

“We'll go on a walk and the kids will see the Tim Horton’s store across the street. They'll see the letters in the name Tim Horton’s and they can identify those sounds! And that's when I'm like, Okay, what I'm doing is making a difference."

Melissa can tell that her students love learning with Jolly. By incorporating movement with sounds and tactile letter practice, like phonics books with traceable finger paths, Jolly makes early literacy learning fun for every kid.

“I have kids who are non-verbal and use their AAC devices to communicate, and I have kids who can talk to you in a paragraph about things. And when I say it's time for Jolly Phonics, they all get a smile on their face. Every single one. Even the kids where you're thinking, Today's a really bad day for them. I don't know… they're like, ‘Okay, we're ready!’

“For me to see that—because I really thought this was never going to work—I really just can’t wait to start with these kiddos, and do another year with this,” she says.

Melissa’s Verdict: “Again, Just Try It.”

“I was a perfectionist, but Jolly taught me that if you make a mistake, it’s not the end of the world. We reflect and try again next time. So just try the first two sounds and see where it goes. Your kids are going to fall in love with it.”

Turn “I can’t” into “I get it!”

You can make differentiation easy for your classroom.

Get started today with your free trial of Jolly Classroom and see how structured literacy can spark joy for every learner. _ *Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices are tools that allow someone to communicate when they cannot rely on speech. They are used by individuals who have difficulty with verbal speech due to various conditions like autism, cerebral palsy, aphasia, or other speech/language difficulties.