Sounds-Write Practitioner Training
Join our flagship courses to gain a comprehensive understanding and the hands-on experience to put the Sounds-Write approach to literacy into practice from day one.
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. Drawing on well-established theories of learning and teaching, Sounds-Write empowers educators with the knowledge and confidence to forge a brighter future for their students.
What does the training 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.
Understand how to use diagnostic tools to determine where new students should start the programme.
What makes Sounds-Write different?
From the first year of school to Year 6, students learn the concepts necessary for proficient reading and writing. They are introduced to the 175 most common spellings of the 44 sounds in English through a carefully crafted sequence that goes from simple to more complex. They learn and practise the Initial Code to mastery before starting on the Extended Code, and, soon after, the reading and writing of polysyllabic words.
Sounds-Write requires minimum planning, preparation, and expense to implement. Based on the latest research into cognitive load theory and the principles of direct instruction, the programme has been specially designed to accelerate learning—no matter the student’s level.
Above all, Sounds-Write enhances teachers’ knowledge of phonics, giving them the guidance, knowledge, and resources to teach children how to read and spell to the best of their abilities. England’s Department for Education has acknowledged the programme as having met all the criteria for exceptional phonics teaching, and it has been endorsed by the Department of Education in Western Australia as a high-quality phonics programme.
What makes great teaching?
This paper was written to set the scene for a summit held over two days in early November 2014 in Washington, DC. The summit brought together 80 school leaders and teachers from a range of countries, including Australia, Canada, Finland, Holland, Hong Kong, Singapore, the UK and the US, to consider the latest research evidence on professional learning and share their practical tools and strategies for using observation and feedback, with the aim of creating a practical guide to support the effective professional learning of teachers.
What do teachers and teaching assistants think?
Teachers’ subject knowledge and therefore their confidence with teaching phonics has vastly improved since the implementation of Sounds-Write. The skills taught through the programme are transferable throughout the curriculum with improved reading, writing and spelling from our children.