Help your child to make an additional 4-5 months of progress in one year!*

*Research shows that the effective involvement of parents / carers in their child’s learning can result in an additional 4-5 months of progress in one year.

Fun and Informative Online Workshops

Start your child on the road to becoming a successful reader and writer by attending one of my online phonics workshops.

These are designed to help you:

Accelerate your child's progress from whatever their starting point is.

Understand how your child is being taught to read and write at school using phonics, term by term as they move from the later stages of nursery through their first couple of years at school.

Feel confident you are involving yourself effectively in your child's learning.

Workshop Details

Workshops are tailored to meet the needs of parents / carers of children in Nursery (3-4 year olds), Reception & Y1 (with some Y1 workshops also being suitable for the parents / carers of children in Y2). Select your child’s year group below to learn more about the choice of sessions available to you.

View Workshops

Sessions are not specific to any particular phonics programme, so are suitable for parents / carers of children in most schools in England and those schools using a synthetic phonics teaching approach in other parts of the UK.

Why attend a workshop?

A synthetic phonics approach to the teaching of early reading and writing has been found to be highly effective and that is why it is statutory in the National Curriculum in England, with many schools elsewhere in the UK also using it.
This is very different to the way in which phonics was taught when you were at school!

Consistency between the approach used at school and the one you use at home will avoid confusion for your child and will help them to make progress in both reading and writing. If you are homeschooling your child, you may wish them to learn to read and write in the same way they would had they been in school.

Schools simply don’t have the time to cover everything you need to know during an annual phonics workshop.

Learn how to maximise the effectiveness of the time you already spend on supporting your child with their learning at home eg listening to them read, doing phonics activities, helping them with spelling and writing.

Know how to pronounce sounds correctly with your child. This will avoid reading & spelling mistakes caused by mispronunciation, as well as the need for your child’s pronunciation to be corrected by adults at school.

Take part in practical and engaging activities designed specifically for you to learn from. You will be able to use some of these with your child after the session.

Receive handouts containing the information you may need to refer to after each workshop. Some of these are resources your child can use too.

You will learn things you may not have realised you needed to know.

Get tips on what to do if your child is making some common mistakes in their reading and writing.

"Lesley offers fantastic and insightful support for parents looking to understand the phonics journey that their child is on.
Her tips and techniques have been invaluable to us, so that we can ensure that when we read with our daughter we are continuing to help her build on her reading and spelling skills in the same way she is learning in the classroom.
We cannot recommend her workshops enough."

"I realised I was using the wrong sounds, so I'm glad I now know how to do it."

"The handouts look great and it is very useful to have those with examples ready to go. I am looking forward to starting this with my 2 children at the end of this week! Thank you so much!"

"Helps me understand some of the things my daughter comes home doing/saying - makes a lot more sense!"

"That was really useful. I wish we'd had this before…. cleared up a lot of it for me."

"Really great. Lesley knows her stuff and loves it."

A unique opportunity to learn at first hand from a phonics expert

I am a former infant teacher with over 25 years experience teaching reception and Y1 children. I am passionate about the teaching of phonics, early reading and writing.

I have been a literacy consultant for over 20 years, training school staff to make phonics more engaging and effective for their pupils and I am the author of a Department for Education approved phonics programme, which is being used in schools in local authorities across the country.

I have run phonics workshops for parents / carers for over 20 years to help them understand how their child is being taught at school and how they can best support their child’s learning at home. For many years these workshops were ‘in person’, but by changing them to online sessions they are now available to parents / carers across the UK.

Frequently Asked Questions

My child can already read fluently and can spell most words correctly. Is there any point in me attending the workshops?

If your child is in the small percentage of pupils who can read / spell exceptionally well for their age, these workshops won't be what you need to support the next stage in your child's learning. These workshops are for the parents / carers of the majority of pupils who learn to read and spell from the beginning of reception and are making good, steady or slow progress from their starting points.
Are the workshops suitable for children to attend?

No. They are designed for adults to help develop their knowledge, skills and confidence so they can then successfully support their children with reading and writing at home. The sessions include information on things children find difficult and mistakes they commonly make - these are things I believe are best not discussed in front of them.
I can't find an advertised date that is suitable for me

If you can't find a suitable advertised workshop date and would like to be notified when new dates / new workshops are available to book, please subscribe to my newsletter for parents/carers at the bottom of this page or contact me if you would like to arrange a bespoke session for you and a group of fellow parents/carers.