You might be wondering why I haven’t posted in the blog for a while… Well, I have been busy writing a free-online course for parents and carers, and I am delighted to let you know that it is now live. In fact, it has been live for two weeks now, and since then, nearly 1300 people have signed up for it. The course, Help your child to read and write, is available on Udemy, one of the largest online course platforms.
Here’s the promo video
The scope of the course is fairly simple: parents are shown how to teach their young progeny how to link spellings in simple CVC words, such as ‘mat’, ‘vet’ and ‘huff’ through word building, word reading, sentence reading and dictation activities.
If you would like to find out more, here’s the link to the course: https://www.udemy.com/help-your-child-to-read-and-write/learn/v4/overview
The course has had move than ninety reviews so far. Here’s a flavour of what people have been saying:
The lessons are extremely clear and the concepts are well explained. Being able to read or spell well doesn’t mean you’re able to explain to a child how to do it, so I think the course is very useful for parents who want to learn how to help their child to read better.
This course just showed that it is important for parents to have a basic understanding of how phonics works so they can help their child in his/her early stage of language acquisition to lay a firm foundation for him/her to become a successful reader. All the lessons are well explained in this course with ample examples to build good understanding of how to teach your child to pull sounds apart in words and push separate sounds together to form a word as how phonics works. However, the part that I love the most in this course is how to correct your child when he/she makes a mistake in his/her reading. The resources provided are also very useful to guide you on how to carry out the lessons with your child in simple steps. This course is highly recommended to all parents. Thank you, John Walker for such an insightful course.
Excellent primer on blending speech sounds into words and segmenting words into speech sounds – skills that are essential for children to learn to read well. The key concepts are clearly explained in plain English and there are lots of practical video examples of exactly what to do to help 4-6 year olds learn to read. Highly recommended.
I will recommend this free introductory course in teaching reading to 4-6 year olds (in USA pre-school and kindergarten age) to teachers and administrators. It provides a clear explanation of the why and step-by-step how of teaching synthetic phonics to our youngest students. And also recommend it – of course – to parents of pre-schoolers, too. The detailed description of how to teach blending and writing words, with its close attention to identifying and patiently correcting errors, was most illuminating. Thank you, John Walker and Sound-Write, for spreading word of this effective, research-proven method of teaching beginner readers. Well done!