Comments and feedback about the course

[debbie]

A lady who had completed the Phonics Training Online course sent me a series of many photos of the beautiful, detailed course notes she'd taken of the course content.

It was very humbling, extremely impressive, and I asked her if she would mind if I shared some of her photos of her notes via Twitter which she was happy for me to do.

I wanted to honour her considerable commitment but at the same time make it clear that there is no requirement to take any notes during the course.

This is what I wrote for Twitter along with attaching four photos of her notes:

I've had permission to share some notes taken by a lady undertaking my Phonics Training Online course. I was blown away when she sent the photos to me. Note-taking is not 'required' but this is true dedication. I feel very honoured that she did the course.

In response to this Tweet, a man who had completed our Phonics Training Online course wrote:

That's right, the course is not designed to be demanding for the learner, but the content delivered is pure gold - the nitty-gritty and nuts n bolts of how to fashion, deliver, fine-tune and sustain a phonics-based early literacy program that's fit for universal application.

You can imagine that I was very pleased to have this affirmation that note-taking is not necessary nor required, and also that this response was so positive about the course!

I asked permission to copy and paste this response.

Then I also replied saying:

Thank you so much for saying as much.....20+ hours is a long time to ask people to devote but measured against my decades of experience brought to the table, it's a fair exchange perhaps?

To which was the response:

Just not sure how more people haven't discovered Phonics International

Since David and I decided to make the full Phonics International programme - including the Early Years Starter Package - entirely free to access, I can report there were immediately hundreds of people signing up for access.

This just goes to show that in this day and age, the 'freebie' approach is able to attract immediate attention and significant uptake.



Update: I asked my amazing 'note taking' lady whether she had found our Phonics Training Online course beneficial for her teaching and this is what she replied:

Dear Debbie,

your course has been tremendously helpful and has, indeed, made a lot of difference to my work practice.

In fact, I am known as a "Queen of Phonics" at my school 🙈.

Thank you so much for everything you are doing!

Thank goodness for that after so much hard work put into the course by David and myself, and extraordinary dedication evidenced by this teacher.

That's one lucky class - year after year lucky children!

[debbie]

Feb 2021 - Lovely to read this via Twitter:

I'm feeling very chuffed about completing the 12 modules of my Phonics Training Online course. I've learned a huge amount and while I'm now rethinking a great deal of my approach to teaching phonics, I've been relieved that many of my doubts about current trends in phonics teaching have been confirmed and that some of my instincts over the years have been correct.

Looking forward to implementing SSP from Monday - alphabetic code and alphabet already on the wall. Thank you @anneglennie for first alerting me to SSP and to @debbiehepp for the online training. And to @TireeSchools for buying the No Nonsense Phonics Starter Pack! Raring to go...

There's definitely a growing interest amongst teachers in Scotland to trial the Phonics International programme (which we have provided free from January 2021) in combination with the No Nonsense Phonics Skills series (to buy):

https://phonicsintervention.org/no-nons ... cs-skills/

In response to requests from parents, we have now made the 9 Pupil Books from the No Nonsense Phonics Skills series available as 'singles'. We now also provide ready-made Flash Cards and Alphabet tabletops - and other core resources.

Here are some photos and video footage with NNPS in action in the home - whether bought independently for use in the home, or used in liaison school to home:


https://phonicsintervention.org/parents-homeschooling/

See our up-to-date range of available hard-copy resources to buy plus our more recent 'Phonics Reading Books' series available as hard copy books and/or as an eBookshelf. We've also put together 'Parent and Tutor Packs' for convenience:

https://nononsensephonics.com

[debbie]

Feb 2021 - Here is more feedback that was wonderful to receive via Twitter 'Direct Message':

Hello Debbie.

I have now completed your training course and I just wanted to say thank you!

It has changed the way I will teach phonics forever and is by far the best phonics training I have ever done (and I've done lots!)

Please do let me know if there is ever anything I can do to help further promote Phonics International. I will of course flag up your training and resources to others at every opportunity.

Thank you again. Best wishes, James

In response I suggested to James that (with full permissions of course), he keeps a record of his progress and the children's progress from baseline, and over time, in the form of photos, jotting down his findings as he goes along, so that one day he might like to write a guest-post for my blog, Reviews/Literacy, here:

https://hepplewhite.org/debbie-hepplewh ... racy-blog/


And of course it would be wonderful if he could share some of this journey via Twitter which enables photos and short videos in addition to written messages.


It's interesting to see how the medium of Twitter is useful for professional networking and message sharing. Currently, we're advertising a series of Live Webinars featuring aspects of phonics and foundational literacy provision.

My Twitter name is @debbiehepp if anyone is interested!

If anyone is interested in any recorded webinars, put Debbie Hepplewhite into youtube's search facility.

[debbie]

Great to see this recommendation for teachers in Australia on FaceBook this morning:

The best professional learning course I've done in terms of SSP is the Phonics International course by Ms Debbie Hepplewhite (see comment above). Check out the Phonics International site. The course is heavily discounted at the moment.

At the time of this recommendation, our Phonics Training Online course remains at £20 + VAT per person.

There are some universities that book all their student-teachers onto our Phonics Training Online course.

For information about large-scale sign-ups by universities, please contact David at support@phonicsinternational.com with your questions and context.

See https://phonicstrainingonline.com

[debbie]

I love hearing about 'real' children and how they are benefiting from the knowledge and practice provided by the resources of Phonics International, I just received this by our message system:

Hi,

Not sure if this is the right place to put this, but I just wanted to thank you for your wonderful materials!

I have been tutoring some year 2 students and one boy in particular, was too nervous to read at all at first. Now after just 3 sessions, he is reading sentences confidently! After coaxing him to try out some sounds and just try one word at a time, he slowly realised that he can read and it's not so scary - I guess because the words are finally decodable! (His mum said he almost never reads for anyone) Thanks again for so generously providing the materials, I'm so proud of him and your materials made such a big difference!

I have your course as well and haven't gotten far into it but have a lot of the knowledge from other sources as well as from reading extensively about (and practising with my kids) the 'Montessori' method.

[debbie]

Dear Debbie, I have just completed the last quiz of the course. I wonder what to do now and how I might get my certificate. Thanks for all the aditional information you have attached to the different modules of the course. I am sure my phonics teaching lessons will improve after attending this useful course. It´s been a pleasure.

Please note:

February 2022

For anyone who has completed the Phonics Training Online course, currently please contact support@phonicsinternational.com for instructions in how to get your Certificate of Completion.

Thank you.

[debbie]

This is a comment shared via Twitter. It's gratifying to know that people have found the 'IFERI' site as the Forum is truly packed with information and developments! If you haven't visited it yet, do take a look!

Yes, IFERI is great!

I'm doing one of your courses at the moment Debbie - there is so much interesting content to read/listen to!

Great for teachers to have access to all this rich, evidence based info when assisting students/parents/colleagues

A later message:

It is a very practical course & teachers can take away something to use in their classrooms after the first hour of study

What a lot of work you've put into it!

Thanks

See https://iferi.org - take a look at the blog and the Forum!

And here is a direct link to the self-study course:

https://phonicstrainingonline.com

[debbie]

We received this query and great feedback from a lady in New Zealand:

May I ask when the NNP Book 2+ and Book 5+ will be available in Amazon? I tried purchasing these in your shop but there is no shipping to New Zealand. I really like your books and I have completed the Phonics International online training course on this website. I am a true believer of your Phonics program. I am using the program for my children and as a support to young children in my Filipino community here in New Zealand.

I really like Debbie Hepplewhite’s resources. I have never seen such a high quality and comprehensive phonics program.
I feel confident that I have covered everything in my phonics instruction.

At the time of me writing this post, we have introduced our 'No Nonsense Phonics Skills' Pupil Books under the branding of 'Debbie Hepplewhite's Pick Up and Go Phonics' via Amazon, with links via our 'Buy Resources' shop here (2+ and 5+ not available via Amazon as yet):

https://phonicsintervention.org/product ... pil-books/

In addition, we are providing our Phonics Reading Books series which can be used with 'No Nonsense Phonics', 'Phonics International Units 1 to 6' and 'Wand Phonics, as purchasable ebooks as well as hard copy books, see here for our produce range - all core resources:

https://nononsensephonics.com

This is because we were asked to provide ebooks for countries and contexts that find it difficult or impossible to import hard copy resources.

[debbie]

I received this interesting question from a course participant:

Hello, I am enjoying the course quite alright, but I have a little issue. I was trained as EFL/TESOL teacher and therefore I am very familiar with the IPA system for the 44 sounds of the English language, but not the SSP. Now, to help me understand better the SSP I made a homemade comparison with the IPA system. But I got stuck with the diphthong that appears in the words tourist, your, sure. Which SSP symbol represents that sound, please? I would really appreciate some further enlightenment on this point, as I am not able to do it by myself.

This is my response:

The problem with the IPA system is that it utilises a further set of symbols along with some letter shapes.

The problem with ‘linguistics’ when this is attempting to provide really pure and precise sound links, this cannot be done readily with the actual ‘print’ of the English alphabetic code.

The practical approach is to simplify the links between speech sounds and established print as much as possible, and not to over-worry about diphthongs. How can we provide teaching (and training) material to be thoughtful and explanatory but also doable and not cause too much angst when teaching the learners themselves – often children.

See the variation of overview Alphabetic Code Charts here: https://alphabeticcodecharts.com .

You will see that some include both IPA and easy-to-use symbols – and some print is actually code for two phonemes, not just one, so one IPA symbol alone will not suffice as we have ‘combined phonemes’ in effect.

Then, when it comes to actual words, the process of sounding out and blending to ‘discern’ the target spoken word very often requires some ‘tweaking’ of ‘modifying’ of the final word. This helps to move phonics away from very precise phonetics. Allow for the tweaks and modifications of pronunciation and this includes when diphthongs are involved.

See in particular this chart:

https://alphabeticcodecharts.com/wp-con ... ymbols.pdf

But if you haven’t visited the charts’ site before, do take a good look at the variety of charts as these can be very helpful – and in practical ways.

Which helped as I received this reply:

Thanks for replying to my query. I found the chart with both IPA and SSP very helpful. That answers my questions perfectly.

[debbie]

This comment was shared via the DDOLL network May 2023 - I was really pleased about this as you can imagine!

One of my best learning experiences with respect to reading intervention was Debbie Hepplewhite's Phonics International training in phonics instruction.

[debbie]

I cannot express strongly enough how heartwarming it is to receive feedback about our https://phonicstrainingonline.com self-study course and any of our phonics resources -whether provided free and online, or whether our hard-copy purchasable resources. Thank you to all those people who have sent me personal messages over the years.

Here is one such recent message with feedback about our online course - very much appreciated - thank you Andrew!

In the sixties and early seventies, I was educated in a system that did not use the phonics approach for reading, much less Systematic Synthetic Phonics. It wasn't until later in my adulthood, when I became a curriculum developer, that I was introduced to Montessori's phonics. I was impressed by the phonics method for reading and sought to learn more about best practices. Over the years, I explored various phonics training programs from both America and the United Kingdom until I finally found Ms. Debbie Hepplewhite's Phonics Training Online to be the best.

Here is my review of Phonics Training Online:

It is a comprehensive, systematic, and informative program, rich with an abundance of helpful resources and download links for additional reading. It deepened my understanding of the historical and philosophical perspectives of Systematic Synthetic Phonics. My favorite part is Ms. Debbie's two-pronged systematic and incidental phonics approach and the role of the Alphabetic Code Chart. This chart aids in designing phonics instruction and in understanding the complexities of the English alphabetic code. Each module builds upon the previous ones, creating a cumulative learning experience. I truly enjoyed every moment of it, and its benefits to me as a curriculum developer cannot be overstated. Thank you, Ms. Debbie, for an excellent training program.

Kind regards,

Andrew Goh

Here is a link to our current offer in ready-made resources - including our more recent Phonics Reading Books series available as hard copies and as an eBookshelf online option: https://nononsensephonics.com !

Here is some information about my formalised, 'Two-pronged systematic AND incidental phonics teaching and learning approach' mentioned in Andrew's review: https://phonicsinternational.com/Debbie ... andout.pdf

Here is the link to our wide range of overview Alphabetic Code Charts designed for different users and uses. These are free and we also provide an 'audio chart':
https://alphabeticcodecharts.com

My approach to phonics provision is the central role of overview Alphabetic Code Charts for all stakeholders concerned in the process of teaching, and learning, the very complex English spelling system. My charts provide comprehensive coverage of the 'spelling alternatives' of the English alphabetic code, and people will discover further code in words with more unusual spellings! Add them to your chart and/or make little posters when words with unusual spellings are discovered!