Online Training Courses
Join our flagship courses to gain a comprehensive theoretical understanding and the hands-on experience to put the Sounds-Write approach to literacy into practice from day one.
Our Online Practioner Training course is available all year round. If you’d like to register, please fill in the form below and one of our trainers will get back to you shortly.
Online Practitioner Training Course - Australia and New Zealand
If you’d like to register then click continue, fill in the form and one of our trainers will get back to you shortly.
Please note this booking request form is for our flagship practitioner training; your booking will not be confirmed until the trainer contacts you directly. If you are looking for our free 'Help your child to read and write' course, please enrol here.
Online Practitioner Training Course - UK, Europe, USA and Canada
If you’d like to register then click continue, fill in the form and one of our trainers will get back to you shortly.
Please note this booking request form is for our flagship practitioner training; your booking will not be confirmed until the trainer contacts you directly. If you are looking for our free 'Help your child to read and write' course, please enrol here.
Online Practitioner Training Course - Australia and New Zealand
If you’d like to register then click continue, fill in the form and one of our trainers will get back to you shortly.
Please note this booking request form is for our flagship practitioner training; your booking will not be confirmed until the trainer contacts you directly. If you are looking for our free 'Help your child to read and write' course, please enrol here.
Online Practitioner Training Course - United States and Canada
If you’d like to register then click continue, fill in the form and one of our trainers will get back to you shortly.
Please note this booking request form is for our flagship practitioner training; your booking will not be confirmed until the trainer contacts you directly. If you are looking for our free 'Help your child to read and write' course, please enrol here.
Online Practitioner Training Course - UK, Europe, USA and Canada
If you’d like to register then click continue, fill in the form and one of our trainers will get back to you shortly.
Please note this booking request form is for our flagship practitioner training; your booking will not be confirmed until the trainer contacts you directly. If you are looking for our free 'Help your child to read and write' course, please enrol here.
Online Practitioner Training Course - Australia and New Zealand
If you’d like to register then click continue, fill in the form and one of our trainers will get back to you shortly.
Please note this booking request form is for our flagship practitioner training; your booking will not be confirmed until the trainer contacts you directly. If you are looking for our free 'Help your child to read and write' course, please enrol here.
Online Practitioner Training Course - UK, Europe, USA and Canada
If you’d like to register then click continue, fill in the form and one of our trainers will get back to you shortly.
Please note this booking request form is for our flagship practitioner training; your booking will not be confirmed until the trainer contacts you directly. If you are looking for our free 'Help your child to read and write' course, please enrol here.
A training-based programme
At Sounds-Write we believe teacher knowledge is crucial to ensure success. After all, the single greatest factor in improving student outcomes is strong teacher knowledge.
There are many phonics schemes and resources out there, but Sounds-Write focuses first and foremost on developing teacher knowledge, empowering educators to forge a brighter future for their students by following the latest innovations in teaching theory.
What does the course cover?
- Learn how to teach the skills, concepts, and code knowledge students need to master in order to become competent readers, writers, and spellers.
- Discover how to introduce them to the Initial Code in the first year of school, moving from CVC words to words with a progressively more complex structure, and then transitioning to learning the Extended Code, alongside polysyllabic words in Y1.
- Learn how to teach all the different Sounds-Write lessons (or activity types), and have ample opportunity to practice them yourself.
- Find out how to teach Sounds-Write to groups of different sizes, so you can work with the whole class, small intervention groups, or one-to-one.
- Learn how to teach through errors—one of the cornerstones of the Sounds-Write approach—and how to conduct formative assessment and use differentiation as an integral part of your teaching.
- Learn how to assess where a new student should start the programme.
More about our Practitioners’ Online Training
The Sounds-Write Practitioners’ Online Training has been designed by John Walker, the author of the Sounds-Write programme, together with experts in online learning, based on the science of reading and the science of learning. It comprises presentations, lesson demonstrations and a range of other activities and content. The course includes a robust rationale for linguistic phonics and covers the theoretical underpinnings of the programme. There are quizzes and online assignments that you must complete to gain a course certificate.
There will be a cohort of trainees doing the course with you. The course will be led by one or more Sounds-Write trainers, who will answer your questions, provide feedback on assignments and run Zoom sessions to support you during the course.
The course lasts 6 weeks.
FAQs
How much does the training cost?
The online training costs are £490 (+ VAT) in the UK, $1089 AUD (incl GST), in Australia, $900 USD (+ sales tax) for the USA and $1200 CAD (+ sales tax) for Canada. For the rest of the world, please enquire. Face-to-face courses cost £490 (+VAT) in the UK, and around $1089 AUD (incl GST) in Australia, depending on location. There may be occasions where a small additional fee may be added to a face-to-face course to cover travel expenses for the trainer. This would be made clear prior to confirming your booking.
The prices shown above are for our comprehensive Sounds-Write packages which offer tailored solutions for Practitioners’ Training, allowing you to choose the option that best fits your unique requirements. Experience the added value of lifetime access to the Sounds-Write Practitioners’ Portal and a range of exceptional benefits carefully curated to enhance your learning journey. These packages seamlessly integrate training, support, and complementary resources under one simple training fee. Discover more here.
Participants receive the Sounds-Write manual, which contains all the lesson scripts, word and sentence lists and texts needed to teach the programme from Reception/ Kindergarten all the way up. On completion of the course, participants gain unlimited access to additional downloadable resources and documents.
There are no ongoing costs other than the initial training costs. We are a training-based programme rather than a resource-based programme, and we strongly believe that knowledgeable staff, rather than gimmicky resources, is the key to ensuring that all students learn to read and spell and can reach their potential.
How does the Practitioners' Online Training work?
The Sounds-Write Practitioners' Online Training has been designed by John Walker, the author of the Sounds-Write programme, together with experts in online learning, based on the science of reading and the science of learning. It comprises presentations, lesson demonstrations and a range of other activities and content. The course includes a robust rationale for linguistic phonics and covers the theoretical underpinnings of the programme. There are quizzes and online assignments that you must complete to gain a Course Certificate.
There will be a cohort of trainees doing the course with you. The course will be led by one or more Sounds-Write trainers, who will answer your questions, provide feedback on assignments and run Zoom sessions to support you during the course.
The course lasts 6 weeks.
The Course, Week-by-Week
Week 0: approximately 2 hours of work: this is mainly to enable you to find your way around the platform, introduce yourself and meet your trainer and other trainees. The course includes a discussion forum where you will be able to ask questions, and where you will contribute to some course discussions.
Weeks 1-4: approximately 8 hours of work per week. You will have to cover the content of that week during that week, and you will also need to complete all the assessment tasks for each week by the end of that week. Three of the compulsory assignments involve you videoing yourself demonstrating some of the Sounds-Write activities and sharing these on the course for peer feedback.
Week 5: approximately 2 hours of work: this week has no formal new content, but you will be able to revisit anything in the course before the course closes. At the end of week 5, the course website will close and you will no longer have access to the online course.
The course is asynchronous, but there are 4 synchronous sessions online during the course, using the Zoom platform. These sessions will be organised by the trainers on the course. These will take the form of a live Q&A, and also provide the opportunity to consolidate your understanding. For those who cannot attend the live sessions, these will be recorded and made available to all during the course.
What equipment will I need for the Practitioners' Online Training?
Equipment and skills
To access the course and do the course activities, you will need access to a PC or laptop (including Mac). You should not do the course on your phone or on a tablet, as some of the quiz activities will not work well. Your computer should have Chrome or Firefox as the preferred browsers (please note that the course will not be fully functional with Microsoft Edge, and that you might not be able to complete parts of the course if this is your only available browser)
You will need a connection speed good enough and stable enough to watch the course videos.
If you are accessing the course website from school or work, it is your responsibility to check with your IT manager that the firewall at your school/workplace will enable you to access external content, i.e. the content from our course platform.
You will need a notebook to write in, and it is important you take notes on the course as you go along.
For some activities, you will need to video yourself. You can use the camera on your laptop or a mobile phone. The format you will need to submit your videos in is: .mov .avi or .mp4 format.
In order to do the course, you will need to have basic ICT skills. You will need to be able to do the following:
- film yourself on your camera/laptop and upload a video following simple instructions,
- take part in forum discussions,
- access and take part in Zoom meetings,
- complete drag and drop and multiple-choice quizzes,
- bookmark pages
If you are not sure the course is right for you, or that you have the time, equipment or computing skills to do the job, please do this quiz now and check our advice