Would you like the skills and confidence to walk into any classroom, ready to help a student learn to read?
We’ve got you covered.
LearnUp’s Essential Phonics provides foundational knowledge and practical strategies to support emerging and struggling readers. Whether you’re a volunteer, paraprofessional, youth worker, caregiver, or anyone eager to make a difference, you’ll gain the tools to step in with confidence from the start.
This Training Is
This short, accessible training is:
- Practical – Learn the most important phonics concepts and how to teach them in simple, effective ways.
- Evidence-aligned – Grounded in the Science of Reading and best practices in structured literacy.
Empowering – Leave with a clear lesson plan, ready-to-use activities, and the know-how to help students make rapid reading progress.

Hear from the LearnUp Executive Director on the benefits of our Essential Phonics training.

What Is In the Course
- Self-paced Course: 5 hours of online, self-paced video content
- Manual: Printable manual and structured lesson plans, along with links to online tools and videos
- Lots of Examples: Tutor-led examples and recordings of live lessons in action
- Aligned Book Recommendations: Decodable and aligned book recommendations, plus compatible materials
- Certificate of Completion: Upon course completion you will receive an official certificate.
What You Will Gain
- The 10 essential structured phonics concepts every child needs
- How reading development works-from sounds to decoding
- Key signs that a student may need more targeted support
- How to use the Essential Phonics lesson plan to teach phonics effectively
- The role of phonics in learning to read

“LearnUp is so efficient – they get the best results while also being the least time intensive and costly. Other programs wanted our son to commit 2-3 hours a day for several months, which would have been much more expensive and difficult to schedule.”
– Russell H., LearnUp Parent
Program Impact
On average, LearnUp students increase their word fluency by more than 50% and jump 2 reading grade levels in under 3-4 months of tutoring.
