Phonics for Teachers
Phonics for Teachers is a teacher training programme aimed at the EFL (English as a Foreign Language) preschool, primary and secondary teachers. The intensive 9 hour course is taught by a highly experienced English teacher and addresses the areas of English responsible for one’s success in learning a foreign language thoroughly (as well as one’s mother tongue) - phonics, spelling and reading (pronouncing), grammar and punctuation. The course gives delegates experience with demonstrating the English language roots and principals to their students in order to teach the language in a meaningful and effective way.
Phonics for Teachers offers the methodology of phonics and related concepts and stands far away from discouraging teachers from applying their own methods of teaching. Instead, it assists them with implementing the phonics method in their planned lessons. In their English lessons, teachers will still develop their students’ listening, speaking and use of English skills as well as guide them in terms of translating and learning vocabulary. At the same time though, they will teach their students to appreciate the phonemic principles and assist them with building up the language systematically and thoroughly.
The training programme, Phonics for Teachers, has been designed as a very practical and visual workshop for a small group of delegates (5-10 attendees). Therefore, the teachers will have the opportunity to work with a wide variety of concrete resources that can be used in class to introduce each phonemic concept in a fully multi-sensory, interactive mode. Furthermore, they will build up a resource pack of games, songs, rhymes and children’s literature suitable for teaching phonics. Our photocopiable material, which we offer to teachers on the course completion, closely follows the mainstream workbook series (ie. Happy House, Chatterbox, Project) therefore diminishes the amount of planning and eases teacher's preparation time.
The course is divided into three progressive time blocks that identify and discuss the main five stages in one’s understanding the English language principals. These stages include:
- the students’ introduction to the phonetic alphabet, single phonics and blending
- basic word level work and related grammatical concepts, ie. the vowel/consonant differentiation, nouns and verbs
- long vowel sounds, ie. the concept of the Magic (silent) E, and related spelling patterns
- word construction, word roots and types of words- synonyms vs. antonyms, homophones etc.
- parts of speech and punctuation concepts
Our intensive Phonics for Teachers course is followed by regular meetings and workshops (generally organised as follow up seminars shortly after the main course) to enable teachers to share their experiences with teaching phonics, obtain feedback and exchange teaching tips with their colleagues. The teachers will also benefit from the opportunity of verifying their phonics teaching skills in our Phonics for Kids courses. Our goal is to develop a community of teachers whose teaching involves and introduces phonics and assist them in promoting such a way of teaching the English language.
Phonics for Teachers is offered in two arrangements - courses open to individual teachers and courses organised at your school.
Courses open to individual teachers
For individual teacher training courses please refer to Course Details.
Courses organised at your school
Phonics for Teachers can also be held at your school, exclusively offered to teachers in your English language department (organised by your school as an in-service training course, paid from your school’s DVPP budget). Dates and price for the school sheltered courses are to be arranged upon your request. Should you be interested in your school participating in the Phonics for Teachers programme please don’t hesitate to contact us. We are happy to tailor the course to the needs of your school and share more information about the programme.