Building Early Literacy Skills – Phonological Awareness and Phonic Knowledge Course for Professionals
Date Attended: Completed 13 February 2025
Content Focus: This course aims to enhance teachers’ understanding and instructional strategies for developing phonological awareness and phonic knowledge in K-2 students. By aligning with the NSW syllabus, it equips educators with essential knowledge and practical strategies to foster early literacy skills in young learners. Through exploring the foundational elements of phonological awareness and phonic knowledge, teachers will gain the tools necessary to create engaging and effective learning experiences that support students’ journey towards reading and writing proficiency.
Teaching Standards:
- 2.1.2 Proficient Level – Know the content and how to teach it – Content and teaching strategies of the teaching area: Apply knowledge of the content and teaching strategies of the teaching area to develop engaging teaching activities
- 2.6.2 Proficient Level – Know the content and how to teach it – Information and Communication Technology (ICT): Use effective teaching strategies to integrate ICT into learning and teaching programs to make selected content relevant and meaningful
- 3.4.2 – Proficient Level – Select and use resources: Select and/or create and use a range of resources, including ICT, to engage students in their learning.
Type: Online self-paced course
Length: 10 hours
Audience: K-2 Teachers
Organisers/Presenters: Teacher Training Australia
Reflection:
The Teacher Training Australia online course ‘Building Early Literacy Skills – Phonological Awareness and Phonic Knowledge’ aims to supplement educators’ comprehension of phonics teaching for early primary years students. With a focus on activity development and teaching examples, the course provides educators with the opportunity to brainstorm new ways for children to develop phonological and phonemic awareness.
I completed this online course after starting a new job as a Children’s Programs Library Assistant at Liverpool City Library. My direct supervisor, the Children’s Librarian, encouraged me to undertake this professional development course to ensure I had a comprehensive understanding of phonics and the appropriate learning development milestones for children 0-12.
Within my role as a Programs Assistant at Liverpool, my responsibilities include examining and updating storytime resources and developing new age-appropriate programs for children 0-12. As our library network provides specific storytime services for age groups classed as Baby’s (0-24 months), Toddlers (2-3 years) and Preschoolers (3-5 years), we decided to undertake a review of program offerings for each age group and determine whether the inclusion of phonemic awareness activities were suitable for Toddler or Preschool curricula. By undertaking the TTA online course, I was able to understand the process of teaching phonics to children, and the sequence of cognitive milestones in relation to phonic capabilities.
The course was divided into 5 modules which covered an introduction to phonological awareness, phonological awareness teaching strategies, understanding phonic knowledge in children, practical activities to develop phonics skills, and assessing children’s phonological knowledge. The course highlighted the two styles of phonics and phonological education; Synthetic and Analytic; as well as highlighting the importance of phonological awareness for children’s ability to develop reading skills. I also gained an understanding of the structure in which to teach a phonics program, with the inclusion of activity and resource examples to demonstrate interactive ways to teach content to children and test their knowledge.
The course allowed me to understand the importance of identifying different sounds in words when reading aloud with children during storytime programs, as well as the importance of repetitive learning and reading to enhance recognition.
I also developed an awareness of how graphemes should be taught by repeating the phoneme sound only once. For example, teaching that the grapheme (letters) ‘ph’ represents the phoneme (sound) /f/, rather than repeating that ‘ph’ represents the sound /f/, /f/, /f/. This teaching method ensures children can easily decode words when reading individually, for example, being able to read the word ‘Photo’ by decoding the first sound as /f/, rather than reading it as /f/, /f/, /f/, before decoding the next phoneme.
By completing this course, I was able to better understand the cognitive milestones which need to be met in order to successfully understand phonics. This allowed me to determine that phonics skills within storytime sessions at my workplace are not suitable for children attending Toddler sessions, as well as determining that only the most basic phonemes and graphemes should be introduced during preschool programs. The learning I gained from this course will also be suitable in the future of my career, as I continue to pursue further study in order to become a qualified Teacher Librarian, to teach library and reading skills within schools.
Leave a Reply