A systematic synthetic phonics
program for F–2

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Explore front-of-class presentations, teacher training videos and support material, including curriculum alignment charts.

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Essential Letters and Sounds Australia

A consistent, whole-class
program with a proven impact


Essential Letters and Sounds Australia (ELSA) is a research-based program tailored for Australian schools, designed to simplify routines and reduce cognitive load for students and educators.

Effective teaching within ELSA involves delivering high-quality, explicit instruction through structured daily lesson plans and using consistent terminology and resources. Key elements include repetition, reinforcement, and regular assessments to ensure all students keep up, rather than catch up.

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Why Australian teachers love ELSA


"What keeps them [students] motivated is the balance of revision and new learning. They experience a real sense of achievement as they recognise and recall what they’ve already learned, especially when reading Harder to Read and Spell Words.

The active participation and frequent opportunities to respond keep them engaged and involved throughout the lessons.

ELSA has become an invaluable part of our phonics instruction - efficient, engaging, and effective."

Jessica, Curriculum Coordinator
Victoria

Supportive and detailed,
on-demand training


ELSA offers comprehensive, engaging training and support through its Teaching Subscriptions, providing on-demand coaching every day of the year, so all teachers will have a good understanding of what phonics is, and how to teach it, with no additional training needed.

The Training Handbook, along with over 60 on-demand training videos, cover the pedagogy and theory behind the program, explain how to use the classroom resources, take you through assessment and intervention tools and give you top tips for implementing ELSA in your school.

There is nothing that a teacher needs to do in the program that they can't watch in the training videos.

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Assessment and Intervention


ELSA supplies all materials for frequent assessment to quickly target and close any gaps in sound knowlege or reading skills.

The Assessment Booklets provide clear instruction on how to administer assessments effectively. They also offer guidance on interpreting students scores and using the data to identify next steps, including determining which student's may require targeted intervention.

ELSA is designed on the principle that students "keep up" rather than "catch up". The program provides a multi-tiered system of support with Tier 1 whole class lessons and targeted Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions.

Read more about assessment and intervention in the Evaluation Pack.

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Assessment and Intervention in the ELSA Phonics program

Shared and Independent Reading


The ELSA eLibrary School Subscription and the ELSA Phonic Readers series make reading practice easy, with titles, aligned to Letters and Sounds, matched to each week of the ELSA progression across Foundation and Year 1.

The high quality decodable texts provide a rich reading experiene while targeting practice of GPCs to encourage mastery, fluency and comprehension. They provide before- and after- reading support, including comprehension questions.

Read more about the decodable readers and eBook Library in the Evaluation Pack.

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Decodable Readers and the eBook Library

Meet our authors and experts

Expert Contributor

Karina is an experienced classroom teacher, school leader, and literacy consultant. Karina is passionate about the use of evidence-based literacy instruction and positive behaviour support practices in Australian schools. She has a particular interest in implementing Multi- Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) to ensure equitable access to effective instruction and intervention, so all students can succeed. Karina is currently a PhD candidate at Monash University, researching the implementation of learning sciences within an MTSS framework to support improved reading outcomes in Australian schools.

Literacy and Instructional expert

Dr Nathaniel Swain is a Teacher, Instructional Coach, and Researcher. With expertise in language, literacy, instructional practices and cognitive science, Dr Swain is dedicated to empowering teachers to develop “life-changing” language and literacy skills in every student, through effective and engaging teaching. He works as a Senior Lecturer in Learning Sciences and Director of Undergraduate Academic Programs at La Trobe University School of Education and SOLAR LAB. Nathaniel has taught a range of learners in schools and universities, and founded a community of teachers committed to the Science of Learning: THINK FORWARD EDUCATORS, now 24,000 members and growing. Dr Swain is a sought after speaker on educational circuits, and has a new book soon to be released in 2024 entitled “Harnessing the Science of Learning: Success stories to kickstart your school improvement”.

Author

Tara Dodson has many years experience in supporting schools across London as Reading Lead and developing CPD programmes for phonics and early reading. Tara runs the live training for Essential Letters and Sounds in the UK.

Author

Katie Press is a specialist English teacher, supporting schools in developing their phonics practice and modelling high-quality phonics and early reading teaching. She is the Director of English for the Knowledge Schools Trust Primaries.

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Professional Development


Join teacher, author, instructional coach and researcher, Dr Nathaniel Swain at a series of free webinars discussing the application of the science of reading in Australian primary classrooms. Nathaniel has also contributed as the Literacy and Instructional expert on Oxford’s new systematic synthetics phonics program Essential Letters and Sounds Australia.

The four sessions are:


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Professional Learning and Development Events

Evidence of Impact


Essential Letters and Sounds Australia has been adapted for Australian educators and learners from a very successful structured synthetic phonics program, Essential Letters and Sounds, developed by Oxford University Press (OUP) in the United Kingdom (UK), which has been validated by the UK Department for Education (DfE), and which is currently being used by more than 1000 UK schools.

In 2023, Oxford University Press (OUP) undertook an impact study with schools in the UK to gain an in-depth understanding of the extent to which and how the Essential Letters and Sounds teaching program enables teachers to deliver consistent and structured phonics teaching.

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Webinar: Discover an evidence-based, explicit phonics program built for Australian schools

Watch our Essential Letters and Sounds Australia (ELSA) webinar to find out how Oxford can support you in implementing a cost effective and evidence-based approach to teaching phonics in your school. Hosted by the Press' Joanna Lake, this webinar will equip you with strategies and resources to implement explicit teaching in synthetic phonics, to support student success.