Online Training Opportunities for Schools and Practitioners with Lesley Clarke

Starting in November 2026 Lesley will be offering a range of online training sessions for schools and practitioners looking to strengthen outcomes in phonics, reading, spelling and early writing.

The sessions are practical, informative and designed to complement your chosen systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programme.

Which of the following topics would be most useful for your setting?

1. Helping children who are struggling to blend and segment CVC words

Simply giving children who are struggling more practice with blending and segmenting CVC words may not address the underlying difficulties.

During this session, Lesley will share a 20-step process for successfully developing the underpinning skills of oral blending and segmenting – and, in turn, supporting children to read and spell CVC words.

'I now know why certain children in my class are ‘stuck’ and I know I can now support them!'

2. Finding out the spelling rules you need to know and how to teach them effectively in KS1

You may be surprised by how much there is to learn about spelling!

This practical session will explore the spelling rules that practitioners need to know and how these can be taught effectively to children in Key Stage 1.

'A great session; interactive so engagement was good and very informative. I have learnt a lot.'

3. Understanding KS1 punctuation and grammar and how to teach these in fun, engaging and systematic ways

A 10-question quiz that Lesley uses to assess practitioners' grammar knowledge currently has an average score of just over 3 out of 10.

With this level of subject knowledge, it is unlikely that sentence-level teaching will be sufficiently effective in improving children's writing.

This course aims to address that gap, developing practitioners' subject knowledge and providing practical, engaging and systematic approaches to teaching grammar and punctuation.

'I have been teaching for over 30 years and would like to say that this was one of the best courses I have been on. It was full of ideas - practical and real and delivered with great enthusiasm.'

4. Discovering how to have a 'big impact' on reading 'pretty much immediately'

Hearing children read is not nearly as effective as teaching them to read. Yet some versions of 'guided reading' still focus primarily on the former.

During this session, Lesley will introduce a model for effective guided reading with children who are still working through their school's phonics programme. The approach can be used when teaching both groups and individual children.

'A fantastic session. It has made me completely re-think how my year team teach guided reading.'

Further information about each session, together with a booking form for schools wishing to reserve places, can be found attached at the bottom of the page.

Lesley appreciates that school budgets remain under considerable pressure. Following requests from individual practitioners who would like to fund their own CPD, she has also included a separate booking form for those whose schools are unable to meet the cost of training.

If five or more members of staff would benefit from one of these sessions, it may be more cost-effective to arrange training exclusively for your school or group of schools. Lesley would be delighted to discuss a suitable date and time.

 

If your school has other current priorities relating to phonics, early reading or writing, Lesley would also be very interested to hear from you. She is always keen to develop and offer training that responds to the needs of schools and practitioners.