Phonics essentials for teachers: A professional development package

Purpose for proposal: To develop and field test Phonics Essentials for Teachers (PET): an Interactive Professional Development Package. This CD-based program for teachers will provide essential knowledge and pedagogy for teaching phonological awareness and phonics skills, including decoding automaticity. PET will be aligned in part with the Concept Phonics instructional program, meaning that teachers will be “students” of Concept Phonics. Major benefits to this approach are: ~ PET will be grounded in research from both education and psychology to deliver knowledge through activities that produce fast and effective learning. ~ While learning about the structure of English and the pedagogical needs of learners, teachers will be practicing strategies that can be used with their students in any instructional program. ~ PET will provide direct links to Concept Phonics so that teachers who choose to use the instructional program can easily see how to teach the knowledge they are learning. Phase I work will prepare and field test the content, Curriculum Based Measures, and software prototypes. While the PET package is being developed, data gathered from pre- and in-service teachers and their students will test the efficacy of the approach and the presentation design.