Welcome to your Color Vowel Journey.
Color Vowel® started its own journey over twenty years ago as this thing we called the Color Vowel Chart. Over time, it has evolved into a powerful collection of instructional strategies known today as the Color Vowel Approach.
We are proud to provide you with the Color Vowel® Journey, a comprehensive training program that promotes life-long learning and curiosity around the topics of effective teaching, phonological awareness, brain-based learning strategies, and the English language itself!
Where along the Journey are you?
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Are you new to teaching with Color Vowel?
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Our Level 1 program provides you with a foundation for teaching English that has been missing from our field: a simple yet robust way to teach the rhythm and sounds of English. Combining the content of Color Vowel Basics with practical explorations of our mobile app, Blue Canoe, and a video-based technique practicum, our Level 1: Color Vowel Basics Online course satisfies all three requirements of the Level 1 certificate.
Our Level 2 program guides you through a deeper exploration of concepts introduced in Color Vowel Basics, and invites you to apply Color Vowel in settings relevant to your own teaching context. Level 2 involves completing three prescribed Core workshops, three Elective workshops, and a two-stage Practicum.
Complete these Core Workshops
Your Level 2 journey starts with three Core workshops, each one engaging a different part of the brain. Core workshops may be completed in any order.
View upcoming workshop dates and times.
Purchase our Level 2 Core Workshops Bundle and save!
Color Vowel Yoga is a collection of simple movements that parallel the movement of the jaw, lips, and tongue when producing the vowels sounds of English. These movements serve as physical anchors for producing sounds that the learner may not yet be able to perceive. In this Core Workshop, participants gain confidence in leading Vowel Yoga and will develop a clear understanding of when to use Vowel Yoga as an instructional intervention.
Spelling Exploration is a sound-based exploration of spelling patterns that ignite learners’ optimism and curiosity about words in their spoken and written forms. In this Core Workshop, participants will gain practical familiarity with each step of the process and explore pedagogical implications.
Rhythms & Chants is a workshop in which participants learn how chants support brain-based language learning; view authentic footage of learners engaging with chants; practice pre-viewing, leading and closing a chant with clear gestures; and master three Color Vowel chants and their variations.
Complete 3 Elective Workshops
Elective workshops vary in topic and theme. All workshops are practical and are designed around a performance-based outcomes. Elective Workshops include:
Coaching & Teaching Practicum
Apply what you learned in Color Vowel Basics while gaining teaching experience with guidance from a Color Vowel Master Trainer.
*Teaching Practicum candidates must currently be teaching (online or in person) in order to participate in the Teaching Practicum, and they must be prepared to acquire permission from their students and/or their institution to provide Color Vowel/ELTS with video recorded lessons that show teacher-student interaction.
Level 3 qualifies you to be a licensed trainer in the Color Vowel Approach and provides you with opportunities to deliver Level 2 Core and Elective workshops for ELTS. Level 3 involves successful completion of our Trainers’ Seminar of a two-part Apprenticeship.
The Color Vowel® Training Seminar includes the following topics:
To fully prepare the Color Vowel® Teacher Trainer, we have created a three-part apprenticeship consisting of:
You are provided with the support of a Master Trainer throughout the Level 3 Apprenticeship.
Color Vowel Basics© is an asynchronous, self-paced introduction to the Color Vowel® Approach. Complete four video-based modules and taking companion quizzes for each module at your own pace.
This live, interactive online course immerses you in the use the Color Vowel® Approach and our pronunciation app, Blue Canoe®. Expand your awareness as you master powerful, brain-based strategies for teaching learner pronunciation, vocabulary development, and oral fluency. Post technique practicum videos after each live session and receive personalized feedback from your Color Vowel® Coach.
Phonological awareness is a person’s awareness of the sounds, rhythms, and intonations they use when speaking and when listening to the speech of others.
In this practice-based workshop, Dr. Robin Barr will lead participants through a series of discovery activities and mini-lectures aimed at increasing teachers’ sound awareness for the purpose of English language teaching.
This course is for teachers with Color Vowel® Level 1 certification and is a required course for Level 2 certification.
Color Vowel® Yoga is a collection of simple movements that parallel the movement of the jaw, lips, and tongue when producing the vowel sounds of English. These movements serve as physical anchors for producing sounds that the learner may not yet be able to perceive. In this practice-based workshop, participants increase their own phonological awareness as they gain confidence in leading Vowel Yoga and learn when to use Vowel Yoga as an instructional intervention.
This Level 2 workshop is open to Level 1 certified teachers or teachers currently enrolled in a Level 1 Color Vowel® Certification course.
Do you dread having to teach vocabulary? Do your students seem to forget vocabulary as soon as you move on to the next unit? In this 4-session workshop, we will approach vocabulary from a sound perspective to appreciate how word learning intersects with pronunciation, collocation, and the aural context. Participants will gain practical strategies to boost learner retention through both incidental and deliberate teaching.
Gain pronunciation coaching experience and insight throughout this 8-week experience.
During the first two weeks, you will be trained to listen, identify, prioritize, and address learner pronunciation challenges by utilizing Color Vowel® strategies taught in the Level 2 Core workshops.
During the next five weeks, you will participate as a Coach in Speak Confidently!, our learner pronunciation course taught by Jennifer Campion and Karen Taylor. Working closely with your practicum mentor and coaching cohort, you will lead select class activities and provide weekly feedback to between 1-3 students enrolled in the course.
A final meeting on the eighth week provides us with an opportunities to reflect on lessons taught and lessons learned.
Prerequisites: All level 2 Core courses: Color Vowel Yoga, Spelling Exploration, Rhythm & Chants, and Sound Awareness.
Level 1 trained teachers may audit this course.
THE PROBLEM: English Learners struggle with phonics.
In a phonics framework, letters are treated as the primary or basic units for learning to read. However, because English does not have a one-to-one correspondence of sound to symbol, phonics instruction in English requires the learner to ‘sound out’ all the possible pronunciations of a spelling until they happen to hear a word they recognize. This process crucially depends on the learner already possessing a well-developed oral vocabulary to which they can connect the words they are trying to decode.
English learners, with their limited English vocabularies, need intervention that boosts their oral/aural word recognition as they learn to make use of the English spelling patterns presented in a high-quality phonics program.
THE SOLUTION: Complement phonics with Color Vowel Approach (CVA) strategies.
The Color Vowel Approach starts with oral words and phonemes as primary. The spellings of those sounds are treated as inherently secondary, mirroring natural language development in which the alphabet, reading, and writing, stem from spoken language.
Guided by Dr. Robin Barr, lead instructor at the Washington Literacy Center, participants will explore practical ways to enhance phonics programs with Color Vowel strategies.
Readers Theater (RT) is a group read-aloud in which individuals perform level-appropriate scripts to tell a story cooperatively. Participants will learn how RT supports development of the learner’s external reading voice (rate, vocabulary, and pronunciation/ comprehensibility) as well as their “internal” reading voice (the voice they “hear” when reading silently), thereby strengthening both oral fluency and reading fluency.
Participants will learn how to guide students through a Readers Theater project from preparation to presentation. They will explore ways that maximize the repetition and noticing necessary to improve fluency in both reading and speaking. Participants will also review the suprasegmental skills of speaking: thought groups, focus words, linking, reduction, and intonation.
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