Milan
Hannah Stibbe is a passionate and qualified ESL educator, originating from the UK where she gained a degree in French and Italian (University of Leicester) and a Trinity CertTESOL qualification before moving to Italy in 2006. Over the years she has specialised in bilingualism in young learners, teaching English in nursery schools, kindergartens and primary schools. Since discovering Jolly Phonics, Hannah has taught hundreds of Italian children to read and write successfully. She set up and managed a no-profit organisation which provided Jolly Phonics courses to kindergarten and primary schools across Milan for several years.
Hannah completed her PGCE (University of Cumbria) in 2021 for which she researched the role of synthetic phonics in early literacy and carried out a small- scale research project on the use of L1 in L2 classrooms. This research gave her extensive background knowledge on the topic of synthetic phonics.
She is head of the English department in a primary school in Milan where she introduced Jolly Phonics and contributed to designing the school’s primary English curriculum, which combines Jolly Phonics and Jolly Grammar with the Cambridge Primary English as a Second Language curriculum. She also teaches adult ESL learners, specialising in diction and speaking skills and runs a speaking club that holds various English-speaking events in Milan.
Hannah is keen to share her knowledge of synthetic phonics and pass her experience using the Jolly Phonics programme on to other teachers to give them a better understanding of it and how to implement it in their classrooms. Hannah can also be found on Instagram (@inglesiamobyhannah), sharing mini-lessons on British English language and culture, pronunciation and snippets of her daily life!