With this project - ELODIE stands for Effectief LeesOnderwijs Doet Iedereen Excelleren [Effective Reading Education Excels Everyone] - we are specifically focusing on high-quality preparatory reading education in Flanders. We want to strengthen preschool teachers and care teams so that they are able to offer all children optimal learning and reading opportunities, with a specific focus on children who do not yet have a sufficient proficiency of the Dutch language. In doing so, we start from a broad vision of reading skills, in which we see the technical aspects of preparatory reading (e.g. phoneme awareness and letter knowledge) in close connection with other components of language acquisition (e.g. vocabulary and language comprehension).

We are building a professionalisation pathway around effective preparatory reading teaching, consisting of three parts:

• An online in-service training of 30 study hours aimed at teachers who provide Dutch language integration programmes (or other forms of language support) at school and at teachers from third kindergarten and first grade. Three substantive themes and their connection are covered: Working on phonemic awareness and letter knowledge; Language conversation and interaction skills; Vocabulary broadening and deepening
• Active participation in one of the learning networks with eight monthly meetings in which we further deepen the content from the online in-service training, but above all offer practice-oriented support for concrete implementation at school.
• Individual guidance (optional) from the school by an educational supervisor with maximum impact on the classroom floor as a goal.