This three day virtual workshop explores the multi-sensory Visual Phonics program and its benefits in reinforcing oral language, speech, literacy and writing skills for students who are deaf or hard of hearing, bilingual, or possess diverse learning needs. This hands-on workshop develops the skills necessary to implement Visual Phonics in therapeutic and instructional settings. It explores research-based strategies to support beginning spelling and reading instruction with the support of Visual Phonics in therapeutic and instructional settings. Participants are provided opportunities to practice techniques for teaching: Letter recognition/matching/naming/formation; Phoneme awareness (K-2), Phoneme-grapheme (sound-symbol) association; Blending of one-syllable decodable words; Recognition of irregular words; and Building accuracy and speed in word recognition.

NOTE: 8 hours of TSHA credit are available for this workshop. Participants must attend all virtual training days to receive credit. Partial credits are not available.

Learner objectives:

1. The participants will explore the rationale behind Visual Phonics (See the Sound) and the impact it has on diverse learners.
2. The participants will establish a working knowledge of the Visual Phonics hand shapes and printed symbols.
3. The participants will identify strategies and uses of Visual Phonics to reinforce literacy, writing, and speech production.
4. The participants will explore strategies for reinforcing articulation therapy while teaching letter recognition, phonemic awareness, phoneme-grapheme association and syllable/phoneme blending.