Teach dyslexics to read and write with coloured phonics

Name: Teach dyslexics to read and write with coloured phonics
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Understand and learn the principles of effective reading and writing interventions using English coloured phonics

Created byRosa Suarez

Last updated 9/2025

English

English [Auto],

What you'll learn

Multisensory techniques to help dyslexic students to read more fluently
Develop a repertoire of techniques to improve reading fluency and comprehension
The sound-spelling relations in English.
The articulation of the English phonemes
Multisensory techniques to improve writing
Multisensory techniques to help students to learn the spellings and sounds of English.

Course content

15 sections • 57 lectures • 4h 18m total length

The Simple View of Reading (the only purely theoretical section in this course!)3:48
Overview of most commonly used literacy programs and interventions (UK-based)9:38
How we encode (AKA 'learn to write words')5:59
How we decode (AKA 'learn to read words')7:52
Explore how children learn to decode by identifying letters, mastering letter sounds, and blending phonemes into words, using multisensory approaches and addressing dyslexia and phonological difficulties.
Decoding difficulties and the two reading routes4:18
Explore decoding challenges in children with phonological difficulties and dyslexia, covering the phonological route (sounding out and blending) and the lexical route (sight words) for unfamiliar words.

Consonants 1- articulation and voiced/voiceless pairs5:40
Explore how consonants are articulated and paired as voiced or voiceless sounds, across places like bilabial, labiodental, and alveolar, with fricatives and affricates, to support reading development and dyslexia-friendly instruction.
Why knowing about articulation of sounds can help to teach reading and writing1:01
Understand articulation of sounds to inform reading and writing instruction for dyslexic learners. Leverage phoneme perception and sound production insights to apply coloured phonics across methods without dependency.
Consonants 22:38
Semivowels/ glides2:00
How to pronounce the final 'ed' in regular past tense verbs3:01
Consonant clusters: what they are, why they are hard and how to read them6:29
Double consonants, digraphs and trigraphs4:37

An overview of my method and its sources1:46
Step 1 - Building the word2:39
Build the word step by step by counting phonemes in swift, using finger cues to identify sounds, and guiding children to write letters that match each sound.
Building a word with complex vowel and Step 2- Writing the word1:30
Explore building the word grow by segmenting its sounds, identifying the consonant cluster, and spelling the long o with multiple spellings, while writing the word as students articulate each sound.
Making 'Writing the word' more multisensory0:28
Step 3- Reading the words2:55
Lead students through reading words by color-coding phonemes and graphemes for the o sound, building automaticity with varied word lists and meaningful sentences.
Step 4- Switching sounds1:18
Step 5- Dictation of words and sentences2:14
Step 6- Adding more words to the 'dictionary'/ reference book2:17
SOS for difficult words1:31
Examples of daily work with words4:38
Demonstrates daily word work with students, tailoring exercises after mastering the system. Illustrates writing-focused practice with real and pseudo words to reinforce graphemes and split digraphs.

Introduction: how to work with the colour-coded phonics charts5:00
Learn to use color-coded phonics charts to build an internal representation of phonemes for dyslexic learners, linking sounds to colors, and practice spellings through grapheme-building and dictation.
Train phonological awareness with coloured rectangles5:51
Vowel sounds charts and materials10:10
Consonant colour-coded charts6:56
A real example of a structured intervention using the coloured charts7:52
A colour-coded song: It's coming home!2:57

Reading comprehension: what it needs and what can go wrong10:11
Learn how reading comprehension builds from background knowledge to mental imagery, text linking, and active engagement, while addressing dyslexia and language difficulties with dialogic reading and memory-friendly strategies.
Strategies to support reading comprehension (with additional resources)7:25
Develop reading comprehension through adaptable scaffolds, pre-reading frameworks, graphic organizers, and explicit vocabulary work; visualize ideas, discuss connectives and anaphors, and encourage self-questioning and prior-knowledge activation.
Practice: develop your understanding of inference6:49
Practice: dialogues to support comprehension using inference3:47
Practice: how to use vocabulary and text structure to develop comprehension2:37
Improve reading comprehension by practicing inference, vocabulary, and text structure, using examples about humans who devastate forests, grasslands, swamps, and rainforest.
Using silent animation images to apply phonics knowledge5:27
Use silent animation and wordless cartoons with coloured phonics prompts to help dyslexic learners generalize phonics into writing through structured practice, memory, and targeted spelling.

Developing written expression step by step7:00
Develop written expression step by step by guiding inner ideas through prompts, building sentences gradually, and using scaffolds and memory activities to support dyslexia and language difficulties.
Using busy scenes to apply phonics knowledge to descriptions0:38
Using cartoons to apply phonics into narrative writing2:21
Explore how to use cartoons and silent animation to teach phonics through narrative writing, with connectives, time adverbs, retellings, and writing exercises with help and less help.

Requirements

Interest or experience in working with students with literacy difficulties

Description

Are you working with a child who struggles to read? Does your student read too slowly, or with too many mistakes? Do you find the relationship between sounds and spellings in English confusing? If you do, you are not alone!

If English is not your native language, or if you have not learned English using a phonics-based method, this course will help you to have a much clear and useful view of the links between sounds and spellings in English. Even if you are a native speaker, you may have never reflected on how phonics work and you find yourself sounding out graphemes (letters or strings of letters) in order to explain them to a learner.

The course is delivered in a friendly manner, and you will feel that you are in a class with me practising some basic techniques to clarify how the sound-spelling system works. The techniques include evidence-based techniques from the Orto-Gillingham approach, one of the most widespread systems for reading remediation.

As most students with reading accuracy difficulties will also develop reading comprehension difficulties, I have added a section on reading comprehension, with downloadable materials to use as help sheets while working with a student.

This course will benefit teachers, parents and assistants working with children who have not managed to read and write words accurately. It will enable learners taking the course to develop a clear inner representation of the English phonological system, which in turn will allow you to better help your student. There are also additional resources to practice the most difficult consonant spelling patterns and all of the vowels and dyphthongs in English, with a step-by-step multisensory routine. You can also use the routine for other texts you have access to or want to use in your intervention.

Who this course is for:

Teachers
Reading tutors
Teaching assistants
Teachers of English as a Foreign Language
Classroom aides
Parents or carers of children with literacy difficulties
The meaning of key terminology: decoding, fluency, comprehension, phonics, grapheme.

Teach dyslexics to read and write with coloured phonics

What you'll learn

Explore related topics

Course content

Introduction5 lectures • 32min

Phonological awareness1 lecture • 1min

English sounds and phonics: consonants7 lectures • 25min

English sound system and phonics: vowel sounds2 lectures • 13min

Vowel reduction in English (multisyllabic words)2 lectures • 10min

Presentation of my literacy intervention method with real examples10 lectures • 21min

Materials and guidance for working with simple letter-sound correspondences1 lecture • 5min

Using a colour-coded phonics system6 lectures • 39min

Reading comprehension: what it is and how to improve it6 lectures • 36min

How to develop written expression (while also settling new phonics learning)3 lectures • 10min

Requirements

Description

Who this course is for: