Flexible Training Options

• Delivery Modes: Participants can complete the training asynchronously, live-virtually, or in person, based on their scheduling needs.

• Support: Dedicated office hours allow participants to ask questions and receive guidance throughout the training.

Core Concepts and Learning Objectives

• Prioritizing Phonics Instruction:
  Gain insights into the Simple View of Reading (SVR) and its role in prioritizing effective phonics instruction.

• Guiding Instruction with Cognitive Load Theory (CLT):
  Discover how CLT principles can enhance instructional strategies and improve student outcomes.

• Phonemic Awareness vs. Phonics:
  Develop a clear understanding of the distinction between these foundational skills.

• Articulating Challenging Phonemes:
  Explore which phonemes are the most difficult to pronounce and understand the reasons behind these challenges.

• Voiced vs. Unvoiced Consonants:
  Understand the importance of distinguishing between voiced and unvoiced consonants in phonics instruction.

• Unlocking the Alphabetic Code:
  Identify the 40+ phonemes and 180+ spelling alternatives that make up the English Alphabetic Code, and learn effective strategies to teach this information to preschool students.

• Integrating Spelling into Phonics Lessons:
  Discover methods to embed spelling activities seamlessly into daily phonics instruction.

• Classroom Activities: Transforming traditional and popular Pre-K activities to align with the principles of the Science of Reading.

• Teaching “Sight Words” with Decoding Strategies:
  Move beyond rote memorization by using decoding strategies for teaching high-frequency words.

• Preparing the Classroom Environment:
  Learn effective ways to organize and prepare the classroom for impactful phonics teaching.

• Explicit and Systematic Instruction:
  Master techniques for teaching foundational skills using precise wording, clear explanations, and unambiguous analogies.

• Assessment and Remediation:
  Develop efficient and effective methods for identifying and addressing the needs of struggling students.

Assignments

• Application of Learning:
  Participants will submit graded work showcasing their understanding, including the practical implementation of training concepts in their classrooms.

Certification of Completion

• Formal Recognition:
  Participants will earn a certificate of completion upon successfully fulfilling all training and assignment requirements.

This session explores how educators can utilize reading science and cognitive science so their PK students can make rapid and lasting literacy gains by focusing on letter-sound recognition, decoding, encoding, and other critical phonics skills.

We will accomplish this end by putting participants in their students' shoes and making them feel what it's like to learn to read for the first time (let’s be honest, we all forgot how we learned to read!).

This unique educational experience will pave the way for a science-backed approach to literacy, replete with practical classroom applications.

Topics Explores

• The Simple View of Reading (SVR) posits that both Decoding and Linguistic Comprehension play an indispensable role in Reading Comprehension. The Simple View of Reading is predicated on a simple fact: writing systems were invented to convey language, not meaning. Letters on a page are a kind of transducer that converts speech sounds, such as phonemes, into visual symbols and vice versa (D=Decoding). The meaning is supplied entirely by the reader.

• Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) posits that Working Memory limitations demand the limitation/removal of unnecessary information—Extraneous Cognitive Load—during the learning process so that information can pass through Working Memory and be stored in Long-Term Memory. Many learning programs (and teachers) ignore the structures that constitute human cognitive architecture as theorized by Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) and overwhelm their students working memory with extraneous information. This session shows educators how to remove unnecessary information that might increase a student's Extraneous Cognitive Load.

• We will explore what the Science of Reading has to say about teaching methods that advocate teaching phonemic awareness without letters, letter names, long and short vowels, sight words, and the six syllable types.

Sources

The Simple View of Reading
Decoding, Reading, and Reading Disability, Philip B. Gough and William E. Tunmer, 1986; The Simple View of Reading, Hoover, W. A., & Gough, P. B., 1990
Cognitive Load Theory (CLT)
Human Cognitive Architecture, John Sweller, 2008
Visual Mnemonics
Pictorial mnemonics for phonics, Ehri, L. C., Deffner, N. D., & Wilce, L. S., 1984
Phonemic Awareness and Phonics Instruction
National Reading Panel, 2000, 2-125.

Participants learn the unique history of the English language, why it has become a complicated alphabetic code, and how this unusual history prompted educators to advocate multiple approaches to reading instruction.

Participants will then experience the difference between two opposite approaches to teaching the alphabetic code: Print to Sound and Sound to Print, and understand why a Sound to Print approach can simplify the phonics experience for both teachers and students.

Building on this information, we introduce the CAPIT Method and the Singular Approach to Reading Instruction—a revolutionary and simplified approach to teaching reading and spelling.

We will also discuss why reading and spelling should be taught together. Research has shown that when students learn to read and spell, they outperform students who only learn to read: “Overall, results suggest that spelling sets up a higher quality representation in memory and highlights the importance of spelling in the development of word reading efficiency.”

We will then explore strategies for teaching spelling and demonstrate that even so-called "sight words" can be taught logically without rote memorization.

Sources

The Unique Role of Early Spelling in the Prediction of Later Literacy Performance, Rebecca Treiman, Jacqueline Hulslander, Richard K. Olson, Erik G. Willcutt, Brian Byrne & Brett Kessler, 2019

Establishing word representations through reading and spelling: comparing degree of orthographic learning: Orthographic Learning during Reading and Spelling, Nicole J. Conrad, Kathleen Kennedy, Wafa Saoud, Laura, Scallion and Laura Hanusiak, 2018.

The Self Teaching Hypothesis
Phonological recoding and self-teaching: sine qua non of reading acquisition, David L. Share.

Learning to read requires that children discriminate between phonemes (sounds). This task is even more difficult when students mispronounce the phonemes (NRP 2000, 2-104).

In this session, participants explore the sound system (phonemes) that underpins the English alphabetic code, discuss what makes a phoneme, and how many phonemes we use in English (the answer is not what many think); we will then divide the phonemes into categories and practice their pronunciations.

Sources

The Importance of Proper Pronunciation
National Reading Panel, 2000, 2-104

A Step-by-Step Guide to Implementing CAPIT in the Classroom.

Reading theory is essential, but practices grounded in theory get the job done. This lecture is a step-by-step, hands-on session that will demonstrate how to teach phonics explicitly and systematically. We will guide participants through a phonics lesson and explain how to help students build knowledge one step at a time. Teachers will practice and model lessons.

The foundation of phonics is memorizing letter shapes, the sounds of speech, and their relationship to one another. But every classroom has some students who struggle to learn these phonics facts and, consequently, can’t blend or segment words. All reading instructors should be well equipped to help such students. In this session, we learn and practice effective strategies for working with struggling readers to ensure they quickly master the relationships between letters and corresponding sounds.

Sources

Visual Mnemonics
National Reading Panel, 2000, 2-125

Pictorial mnemonics for phonics, Ehri, L. C., Deffner, N. D., & Wilce, L. S., 1984