Read for Life Uganda uses EdAlive Fonts to boost Literacy

Aussie School Fonts Plus has been inside classrooms across Australia since its release in 2013. With fonts for every state and territory and fonts for the indigenous languages of Anangu and Yougnu it’s not hard to see why. What may be surprising to learn, though, is that the Australian Fonts are being used in countries all over the globe.

Uganda is one such country with Read For Life Uganda, an NGO that assists in training teachers with reading and writing skills. Founded in the mid 2010s by Jody Spencer, their group works with training teachers to teach phonics to their students. Their goal is to make sure every child in Uganda learns the necessary reading and writing skills early on, so they can succeed in later schooling and adult life. In working to achieve this goal, Read For Life has trained over 50 teachers and is continuing to train more.

Where Aussie School Fonts Plus comes in

In order to train Ugandan teachers with phonics, Read For Life put together the Fun of Phonics program. This program centres around a phonics curriculum for ages 3 – 11 in three key parts. This learning program includes a wealth of learning resources including manuals, songs and flashcards, with more resources in the works. It is with their flashcards that Aussie School Fonts Plus comes into play. Read For Life uses the clear lettering for both NSW and SA fonts to create the flashcards. This not only shows how the letters look and how they should be written, but also assists as an aid to show how the phonetic sounds apply to the letters in the word.

Amazingly enough, these fonts assist with more than just the flashcards in the Fun of Phonics program. We recently spoke with Jody Spencer to hear what she had to share on how they use Aussie School Fonts Plus.

What Jody had to share

What do you use the fonts for? 

• We use them for a set of flashcards we have made ourselves which we use when we are teaching other teachers phonics and how to write the sounds correctly. 
• We use them as a guide for our staff when teaching correct letter formation to student teachers we teach at our nursery teacher training college.
• We have used them as part of our neighbourhood teaching during lockdown to help children with handwriting. 
• We use them for our own flashcards in our classroom and for a phonics chart we have made ourselves for teaching the sounds and also modelling correct letter formation for the children. 
• We use them for professional development when teaching how to correctly form letters (arrow fonts) and to show where the pencil should start and finish. However we mostly teach on a chalkboard, but the font is used as a guide and for our own development of skills. 

How do you find this helps in the classroom? 

“The fonts help children to learn how to correctly form their letters. They also help teachers to improve in their own handwriting skills.”

Check out Aussie School Fonts Plus Today!

Have some new ideas on how to help your students handwriting? Wanting to make some flashcards, custom writing templates and other handwriting resources for your classroom? Then look no further! Get Aussie School Fonts Plus from our EdAlive Online Learning Shop today!