Welcome to the Literacy Essentials video training course. You are about to embark on an exciting journey!

Typically, this course is conducted live over the course of four days. It encompasses four units, and one unit per day is taught. Each unit follows the structure of your Literacy Essentials Teacher Training Manual. In the first two units, we ask you to put your “teacher hat” down and put on your “student hat”—that is—we want you to learn the material yourself. Beginning with unit three, you can put your “teacher hat” back on as we start to think of instruction geared towards the students in your classroom. As you plan to participate in the online course, it is best to schedule blocks of time as close to the live schedule as possible. You’ll want to actively participate with the presenter, Lyndsey, by orally responding to her questions, so we recommend you work in a quiet and private setting that allows you to focus on the content in the video as well as the content in your Teacher Training Manual.

Over the course of the four units, you will learn about the code of English, handwriting, phonograms 1-72, spelling rules, markings, how to teach the code using Literacy Essentials’ methodology, and how to plan your lessons to teach your students. This course will allow you to interact with Lyndsey through explicit instruction, prescribed and punctuated practice, the use of the My Orthography Notebook and practice/assessment folder, and gain experience tracking and assessing your own skills that model what we want you to do with your own students. We’ll explain how the teacher guides are organized so that you can plan effective literacy instruction throughout the day.

This training course is the first step in your journey, and we want to encourage you to give yourself grace as you learn the material and use it in your classroom the first year. Your teacher guides and associated materials are your friends and contain the information necessary for you to implement this literacy curriculum with fidelity. You should refer to them often! We hope this course is helpful to you as begin to teach students to write and read using Literacy Essentials.

What you'll need for this course:

Literacy Essentials Teacher Training Manual
A box of Literacy Essentials phonogram cards
My Orthography Notebook
Three sharpened yellow #2 pencils
A three pronged folder with pockets

After the course, it will be helpful for you to have access to the Literacy Essentials teacher guides and Copy Masters for reference.