Chief Trainer and Director of Phonics Kingdom, Jigna Dharod is an Official Certified Trainer with Jolly Learning UK and IIPE Canada for Experiential Learning. Her experience spans over 28 years of training children and teachers in the fields of Early Childhood Education, Jolly Phonics, Jolly Grammar, English, Creative Writing, Handwriting Improvement, and Graphology. She also consults and develops curricula for many reputed schools across India. Being an avid learner, she has continuously enhanced her skills through various programs, including Phonics International, Fitzroy Phonics, Music and Movement, Emotional Intelligence, Brain Gym, Remedial Education, UDL (Using Drama for Learning), Double Doodles, Hooking Up from Head to Tail, and Storytelling, among others.
She runs the “Phonics Club,” which currently caters to more than 1,000 students annually through her nine centres and has trained over 10,000 teachers across the globe. During her journey as a teacher and trainer, she realised that a strong foundation in writing is essential. VCOP and Big Write emerged as the perfect solution, helping students build confidence by providing them with a clear framework and the right direction to develop strong language skills. She aims to take this wonderful program to a larger audience, enabling more students, teachers, and educational institutions to benefit from its proven approach to literacy and writing development.
Shalini is the Founder and Director of Phonics Power, a leading institute in India that offers various programmes focused on Early Literacy and English Language Development. As a passionate educator, she has also served as an educational consultant and teacher trainer since 2012. An accredited trainer for Jolly Learning (UK) and Oxford University Press (India), Shalini is actively involved in teacher training and has trained nearly 7,500 teachers from over 340 private schools and teacher training institutes. She also works as an academic consultant and curriculum planner for many of these schools and takes great pride in helping them transition from traditional rote learning methods to the more effective Synthetic Phonics approach.
Her expertise includes training in phonics, grammar, creative writing, comprehension, reading and spelling intervention for primary students, and spoken English. She also designs engaging language lessons for secondary students using storybooks, short films, feature-length films, and advertisements as learning tools. Driven by her vision of providing an effective, simple, step-by-step, and enjoyable writing programme, Shalini joined hands with Jigna Dharod to create an extensive framework for creative writing aligned with the Big Write and VCOP methodology. Together, they are working to bring a significant change in the approach to writing in Indian schools through their Big Write and VCOP-inspired creative writing workshops for students and teachers.
