John and Tita’s trip to Australia!

We’ve been lucky enough to spend the last 5 weeks in Australia, visiting schools, giving talks and catching up with many of the Sounds-Write trainers.

John gave talks to educators at DSF in Perth, Busselton (hosted by WA trainers Maureen and Helen), SPELD VIC in Melbourne, and at Clarendon Ballarat College and Camperdown College in Victoria. He focussed mainly on leading phonics in school, and discussed some of the key advice about implementing Sounds-Write that is in the newly published Phonics Lead Handbook (Australian edition). If you are leading phonics in your school, make sure you download the Handbook ready for the next school year! It’s available on the Portal.

It was also great to visit schools, both ones we know well and some we hadn’t visited before. We are always learning from the new insights we get from seeing Sounds-Write in all sorts of different contexts, and we love listening to practitioners and answering their questions.

At Camperdown College, one of the Sounds-Write Training Schools, we discussed all things phonics with the wonderful staff, and particularly enjoyed hearing about their work on morphology and etymology in years 5 and 6. It was great to catch up with Jacinta, Junior Campus Assistant Principal,  and with Kathryn (the wonderful prep teacher in our online course… “Say the sounds and read the words”).

Lara Lake Primary School in Victoria have been using Sounds-Write in Prep all year and have made great progress: routines were really well embedded, and the keen and knowledgeable staff have been teaching Sounds-Write with fidelity and at a great pace. They had almost completed the Bridging Unit, and we had the opportunity to trial a change that we’re thinking of making to the end of the Initial Code, and to discuss it with staff.

John and Tita with Mel, Learning Specialist, and Emma, Assistant Principal, at Lara Lake Primary School.

One of the things that we really appreciate about visiting schools is when we meet school leaders who understand the importance of  providing high-quality, inclusive phonics instruction for all students, and have a clear and ambitious vision for how that’s happening in their school. Visiting Camperdown college always  reaffirms that belief, and we could see the same determination in the leadership teams at Lara Lake and Hamlyn Banks in Geelong, which we also visited for the first time this year.

Prep students at Hamlyn Banks doing the Bridging Unit.

When in Melbourne, John, Biljana and I also had the opportunity to see Sounds-Write in a very different setting when we visited Roxburgh College and spent the day with two speech therapists, Teagan and Helen, who are supporting secondary school students in interventions settings with their reading and spelling. We also visited The Pavilion School, something that John and I had wanted to do for a long time, as we’re aware of the great work colleagues there do to support students in a very challenging setting. Talking to staff in these two secondary settings helped us firm up our strategy for secondary schools, which we’ve been working on for the last few months, and which we’ll finalise in 2024.

John, Biljana and Ashraf also visited Docklands school in Melbourne, observing lessons, giving feedback, and giving a talk to the staff.

It was a pleasure to hear about the great results Docklands has achieved in F&Y1 this year.

The last day of Hannah’s training in Sydney, and 16 happy new Sounds-Write trainees!

Finally, we spent the last week in Sydney, where we attended Hannah Windmill’s face-to-face training. The lovely group of teachers and speech pathologists were hard working and asked great questions, and we were delighted to sign Hannah off as a fully-fledged trainer. With her colleague Nicole Pham, both at Allied Health Partnerships, they’ll be delivering face-to-face and online training in the Sydney area.

What a wonderful end to our year! Happy Christmas to you all, and all the best for the new year!

Tita and John