The Reading Hut®
"On a mission to inspire every child to read, learn, and find joy in words. To achieve this, we must stop making learning to map words so difficult for so many."
Connecting Young Minds to Spoken and Written Words through Personalised Discovery Word Mapping – MyWordz® – Mapped Words®
MAPS - Memory, Awareness, Processing, and Speech - SCREENING
Bypassing the Education System to Immunise Children Against Illiteracy
Screening toddlers to identify the 1 in 4 at risk of developing reading and spelling difficulties and being labelled with dyslexia is such a worthy cause. By 2027, we aim to have the technological capacity to screen, store, and analyse data for 1.5 million 3- and 4-year-olds in England each year. We ‘screen and intervene’ before they even realise they were heading towards a school life no child deserves. We ensure they won’t struggle to read and spell, allowing them to focus on their strengths—while increasing the odds of them reading for pleasure early on. With the adoption of MAPS Screening worldwide, we offer a clear path to eradicating illiteracy globally.
'Word Mapping Mastery'
The discovery journey towards orthographic mapping #Playknowlogy
Written by the Neurodivergent Reading Whisperer®
Word Mapping Mastery:
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Understanding MySpeekie® – NextGen ONE-Screen AAC
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Little Mappers – Reading at Three with Mapped Words®
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Screening Three-Year-Olds to Defy Dyslexia with MAPS
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Ensuring that Children at Risk Learn to Read in the Way Their Brains Learn—Before Starting School
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Understanding How Brains Learn to Read and Spell (and why popular methods make it so hard for so many, especially if neurodivergent)
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Adding 'Authographic Mapping' to Your Vocabulary – Demonstrating an Awareness and Celebration of Ausome Autistic Pattern-Seeking Minds
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Creating AttentiA within the Neurodiverse Classroom – Fostering an Intrinsic Desire to Engage with Spoken and Written Words
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Teaching a Whole Class of 4–6-Year-Olds to Read in Less Than 18 Months
Using 'Speech Sound Pics'—even if most started school with no English or are non-speaking -
Incorporating Activities Throughout the Day with Words That Matter to Children
Short, engaging exercises that boost reading and spelling skills -
Screening Teachers of Phonics for Word Mapping Proficiency (it's hard when you can already read!)
And more!
What is MySpeekie?
For the first time, very young children can type on a 'speech sound' keyboard, see any word they build appear, and hear it voiced. Fabulous for non-speaking autistic children!
Avery is learning how words work by exploring words that matter to him. Speech to text!
This is child-led, personalised learning. To Avery, this is PLAY. He chooses it for fun.
We can identify children at risk of developing dyslexia as early as six months old.
Children are not born with dyslexia; however, many are born at risk of developing it.
Typing words in 'Phonemies' creates new pathways in the brain, allowing us to prevent dyslexia from developing
- even before children begin learning about 'letters and sounds' at school.
Our goal is to screen all children before they turn three, ensuring no child starts school at risk of struggling to learn phonics, read, or spell.
Get involved in this ground breaking initiative as we raise funds to develop a tech-based version of Miss Emma's face-to-face screening. Together, we will launch a national screening project capable of assessing 1.5 million 3- and 4-year-olds annually, analysing data, and supporting 'at-risk' children before they enter the education system and throughout their primary years.
This is Immunisation Against Illiteracy—a transformative step towards dramatically increasing the number of children reading for pleasure. By fostering a culture of reading for enjoyment, we empower literacy to become a powerful catalyst for meaningful, systemic social change.
We create discovery learning tech for NextGen learners! MySpeekie® has launched! Even two- and three-year-olds can type on the keyboard with the Phonemies to create the words they want to see pop up—and have them voiced!
MySpeekie® is designed for all young children and gives non-speaking children a voice!
No more wading through picture symbols or words they can't read—just one screen, fun Phonemies, and 17,000 words already stored in the Mapped Words® Bank!
And it’s not traditional word mapping via phonics as we don’t start with letters! They spell in speech sounds and then see the text. So they can choose any words or sentences!
Which words would you build? Connecting spoken and written words is FUN!
MyWordz®—Discovery Word Mapping! PlayKnowlogy - Now in the App Store!
MyWordz® with MySpeekie®
Speech To Text for All #MyMappedWords
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mywordz-with-myspeekie/id6737770129
The World's first Orthographic 'Code' Mapping Tool: Mapped Words® show the Graphemes in English Words.
This makes learning to read and spell far easier as made VISIBLE and easier to DISCOVER! #PlayKnology
The Code Mapping® Tool app launches shortly.
Map the word, to show the graphemes, and then download your Mapped Words® Change the font after downloaded if you need to!
Have a free play with the Word Mapping Tool on WordMappingMastery.com
Word Mapping Mastery: The Early Years Playbook for Lifelong Learning #playknowlodgy
We SHOW the Code: Graphemes (Sound Pics®) are presented through Code Mapping®, and Phonemes are represented via Monster Mapping® using Phonemies. This is the NextGen Letters and Sounds approach, designed for learners who simply want to reach the 'reading for pleasure and meaning' stage as quickly as possible, and for parents and teachers who —and for parents and teachers who want to explore rich content, not phonics in isolation."
Orthographic Mapping (OM) becomes easier when graphemes are clearly displayed, accompanied by a phonemic representation for the corresponding phonemes.
The Reading Hut Ltd: Empowering Parents and Teachers to Immerse Neurodiverse Learners in Spoken and Written Word Mapping for Easier, Purpose-Driven Reading & Spelling
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Mission
At The Reading Hut®, our mission is to train and empower teachers to ensure that every child can learn to read and spell proficiently. We address a crucial gap in literacy education: many teachers struggle to map words due to orthographic interference and lack the phonemic awareness needed to teach reading effectively. Our goal is to equip teachers with the skills and tools necessary to guide every child toward literacy success.
The Problem
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Teacher Knowledge Gaps: Many educators face challenges when mapping words for their students, due to a lack of training past synthetic phonics programme GPCs and also orthographic interference—where their understanding of spelling patterns interferes with their ability to focus on phonemes (speech sounds) in words.
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Lack of Phonemic Awareness: 1 in 4 children lack the phonemic awareness on school entry necessary to learn to read, and most adults—teachers included—are unaware of their own limitations in this area.
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The current literacy crisis in the UK is alarming, with 25% of children unable to read proficiently by the end of primary school. This affects their future education and life opportunities.
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Challenges for Neurodivergent Students: Children with learning difficulties, particularly those with dyslexia, struggle significantly when educators aren't equipped with the right tools to support their phonemic awareness development.
Our Solution
The Reading Hut Ltd offers a comprehensive solution by training teachers to:
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Map Words Effectively: Our training programmes help educators understand the phonemic structure of language and overcome orthographic interference. They get excited about the possibilities Mapped Words® offer!
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Build Phonemic Awareness: We provide teachers with tools and resources to enhance their own phonemic awareness, allowing them to teach reading with greater confidence.
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Use Innovative Screeners: Our Phonemic Awareness Screener helps teachers identify children at risk of reading difficulties before formal phonics instruction begins.
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Facilitate orthographic mapping by making the correspondences between letters and sounds easier for ALL children to understand from day 1.
Our programmes are practical, research-driven, and designed to meet the needs of modern educators who are tasked with teaching NextGen children! We focus on:
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Overcoming Orthographic Interference: We teach educators how to focus on the letters and sounds in words—key to teaching children to read and spell.
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Phonemic Awareness Mastery: Our training ensures that teachers build strong phonemic awareness, helping them support all students, especially neurodivergent or learners of concern.
Although Emma Hartnell-Baker's doctoral research is ongoing, it directly informs our Word Mapping Mastery approach. We are focused on understanding how orthographic interference affects teachers' ability to map words, which is a critical factor in teaching reading, particularly for children with dyslexia.
Emma Hartnell-Baker's design of IPA aligned phoneme characters introduces a direct and explicit teaching method that transcends the limitations of phonics and picture embedded mnemonics by focusing on grapheme and also phoneme representation without relying on contextual knowledge. This approach promises a more inclusive and effective phonics instruction by accommodating diverse learning needs and facilitating personalised learning.
Strategies for Overcoming Challenges:
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Integrating a Broader Range of Phonemic Experiences: Expanding the curriculum to include a wider variety of phonemes and graphemes from the start enhances flexibility and engagement.
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Using Direct Phoneme Representation: IPA aligned phoneme characters (Speech Sound Monsters) offer a clear, universal path to phonemic awareness, overcoming the issues many learners face when being taught with traditional picture embedded mnemonic.
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Encouraging Personal Connection and Relevance: The phoneme characters enable teachers to adapt and enhance existing materials to reflect diverse experiences. This enhances motivation and fosters a deeper interest in mapping words for reading and spelling.
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Facilitating Transition to Complex Phonemic Awareness: Visible sound symbols embedded into orthographically mapped words (another unique tool designed by Emma Hartnell-Baker) offers a simple and logical introduction to the variability of phoneme-grapheme correspondences.
