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."
The Reading Hut®
Connecting Spoken and Written Words in Ways That Make Sense to All Learners
Rethinking the Way Phonics is Taught
Whether screening 3-year-olds for dyslexia before they start learning about 'letters and sounds', using our unique 'Phonemies' (speech sound characters that make English phonemes 'visible' conceptually), or helping children connect spoken and written words in a language that is not their first, our priority is that every child is having fun! We MUST personalise learning to speak, read, and spell in English for all.
Word Mapping Mastery is achieved through an immersion in language and an exploration of words, not a one-size-fits-all programme.
The way phonics is being taught in England needs to change.
No internet or electricity? No problem. We are passionate about creating tech solutions that empower children to learn in their own way, anywhere, to develop word mapping mastery. The myth that all children must be taught in the same way and at the same time, because all children learn to read in the same way, is being debunked in real-time around the world! Not all children need the same learning environment and activities to reach the goal of fluent, independent reading for pleasure. Anywhere!
My forthcoming book will outline a roadmap to immunising all children globally against illiteracy—not just why this matters, but how to do it. Thank you to all the wonderful people who have helped me on this difficult journey. Illiteracy actually benefits many ...
#mywordz #dyslexia #inclusion #speechsoundmapping #phonemies #AttentiA #immunisationagainstilliteracy
Speech Sound Monsters® in classrooms (huts) with no electricity, internet or qualified teachers.
Speech Sound Monster Mapping® is fun anywhere! Word Mapping Mastery® tech will enable all children to learn to read and write in English anywhere.
In discussions about children's reading difficulties, the focus is often on helping those who are already struggling. But a crucial question remains: Why are children facing these difficulties in the first place?
As Noam Chomsky notes, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion while allowing very lively debate within that spectrum.” (From How the World Works)
Current debates focus on the assumption that all children need explicit synthetic phonics teaching throughout Key Stage 1. Debates then centre on how to help children who struggle with reading, rarely questioning why the system allows or even expects these struggles to occur.
Advocates of whole-class synthetic phonics programs in Key Stage 1 believe they are preventing reading difficulties, but they often ignore evidence showing that this one-size-fits-all approach can actually create more problems. Jim Rose suggested giving the mandate six years. That period ended in 2012, and it’s clear the decision was flawed—fewer children can read by age 11 now, leaving many unsure how to address the failures.
By accepting that some children will inevitably struggle, we reinforce a system that profits from failure rather than preventing it. It’s time to broaden the debate and focus on creating a system where all children are set up for success from the start.
Mandating whole-class synthetic phonics programs and Year 1 testing of single words with specific GPCs (only 100 or so out of the 350+ used daily) not only creates instructional casualties (at least 1 in 4) but also contributes to an anxiety crisis - and a school avoidance crisis - and potentially a pipeline to prison.
There are other options!
Miss Emma
Unique early screening of 3-year-olds coming soon: we are committed to finding the 1 in 3 who are likely to struggle with learning to read at school. This 'risk' is not linked to their intelligence or oral language skills: it relates to phonemic awareness. Struggling readers, including those with dyslexia, have difficulty acquiring phonemic awareness. They have difficulty perceiving and working with the oral sounds of language (Ehri et al., 2001), which has consequences for future reading development.
Speech Sound Play is a stand-alone early intervention plan with an easy-to-follow program for parents to support phoneme articulation, phonemic awareness and phonological working memory before their child starts learning phonics in the 'pre-school' years. Perfect for 2 - 3 year olds! Especially for those we predict - using our Phonemic Awareness Screener - will likely face reading difficulties when they are taught to read in school in a classroom setting.
MySpeekie: Early, Easy Speech, Communication, Reading, and Spelling for Very Young Children. Join us to prevent the struggles faced by 1 in 3 children in school when learning to read and spell. They LOVE the Phonemies, which reduce cognitive load. They call them Speech Sound Monsters®! This engagement is at the heart of our success!
With mapped words learning is not planned as such; instead, words are explored according to the child and the moment via Speech Sound Mapping. Parents have fun exploring spoken and written words with 'Phonemies' from birth. Create their own 'monster mapped' books - choosing ANY words they are interested in - no restrictions - and explore them with the MySpeekie tech. Reading for Pleasure is a great by-product!
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There are no longer any 'tricky' words.
They are only considered 'tricky' within phonics programmes due to the instruction. Â
The Simple View of Reading posits that reading comprehension is the product of two distinct components: language comprehension and word reading (decoding). This model leads many practitioners to assume these components develop - and are to be taught - sequentially and separately. The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework in the UK reflects this by emphasising the importance of building a foundation in language comprehension before focusing on decoding skills. The EYFS framework states:
"It is crucial for children to develop a lifelong love of reading. Reading consists of two dimensions: language comprehension and word reading. Skilled word reading, taught later, involves both the speedy working out of the pronunciation of unfamiliar printed words (decoding) and the speedy recognition of familiar printed words."
Source
The EYFS traditionally promotes an initial focus on language comprehension, engaging children with spoken (whole) words and texts and fostering a love of stories and reading. This is typically followed by phonics instruction, where children learn to recognise letters and their corresponding sounds (going print to speech / eg "what 'sound' does this letter make") and expect children to blend them - with phonemic awareness - to form words. 1 in 4 start school without phonemic awareness. (DfE 2018) Many phonics programmes do not focus on language comprehension - other than of words with the target GPCs - and reading comprehension, the focus is on 'decoding'.
However, a 'different' - neuro-affirming - approach involves using Phonemies—visual representations of speech sounds that can be embedded into words. Phonemies allow children to see the sound values directly within the context of words, enabling them to figure out the pronunciation and meaning of words within an opaque orthography even if they have not been explicitly taught the letters and their sounds beforehand. This method also supports phoneme articulation and leverages children's phonemic awareness, which often needs to be explicitly taught and developed through targeted Speech Sound Mapping activities. An interest in these playful activities is vital!
Speech Sound Mapping focuses on the simultaneous exploration of speech sounds (phonemes), spelling (letters), and meaning. This method integrates these elements to support children in understanding and decoding words more naturally and holistically. By seeing Phonemies embedded within words, children can use activities designed to enhance their phonemic awareness, facilitating the decoding and comprehension of words. This approach allows for the development of phonemic awareness from an early age, building on the child's existing schema, and make the 'Speech, Spelling and Meaning' links simple to understand.
Those who understand word mapping utilise Phonemies, facilitating early and comprehensive exploration of both spoken and written words. By removing the cognitive load associated with traditional picture mnemonics (e.g., associating an apple with the sound /æ/), children can focus on phonemic awareness and orthographic knowledge simultaneously. This method of integrating Speech, Spelling, and Meaning (SSM) supports effective orthographic mapping, enabling children to read by sight more efficiently. They do not need to wait for anything to get started! Unlike with the application in England of the Simple View, which posits that there are two, rather than three, elements.
Research by Ehri (1998, 2005, 2014) and Share (1995) on self-teaching and orthographic mapping underscores the importance of integrating phonemic awareness with decoding and language comprehension. Ehri's research highlights how children form connections between sounds and letters, leading to automatic word recognition. Share's self-teaching hypothesis explains how repeated exposure to written words helps children independently develop word recognition skills through phonemic awareness and word mapping (speech sounds and their spelling) practice.
While the Simple View of Reading has been foundational, embracing new instructional methods like Speech Sound Mapping and Phonemies within the Ortho-Graphix® mindset can enhance early reading instruction by integrating language comprehension and decoding from the outset. This promotes a more robust and holistic literacy development in young children, allowing them to decode and understand words within their context, leveraging their developing phonemic awareness to build a solid foundation for lifelong reading skills.
References
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Ehri, L. C. (1998). Grapheme-Phoneme Knowledge Is Essential for Learning to Read Words in English. In J. L. Metsala & L. C. Ehri (Eds.), Word Recognition in Beginning Literacy (pp. 3-40). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
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Ehri, L. C. (2005). Learning to Read Words: Theory, Findings, and Issues. Scientific Studies of Reading, 9(2), 167-188.
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Ehri, L. C. (2014). Orthographic Mapping in the Acquisition of Sight Word Reading, Spelling Memory, and Vocabulary Learning. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18(1), 5-21.
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Share, D. L. (1995). Phonological Recoding and Self-Teaching: Sine Qua Non of Reading Acquisition. Cognition, 55(2), 151-218.
Avery (3-year-old is learning about 'bodies' at the moment! Because of the Phonemies (Speech Sound Monsters) he can explore the Speech, Spelling and Meaning at the same time, building on existing schema, to store the word in his orthographic lexicon.
"schema" refers to a cognitive framework or concept that helps organise and interpret information.
The Speech Sound Mapping Theory posits that with a visual hook for a phoneme (Speech Sound Monsters) and accelerated phonemic awareness, along with visual and linguistic phonics (Speech Sound Pics), all children will be motivated to reach the 'self-teaching' and, therefore, 'orthographic mapping' phases earlier and with greater autonomy.
Phonics, taught explicitly and systematically within the Speech Sound Pics (SSP) Approach is 'linguistic and visual' (not synthetic) I am therefore focused, primarily, on launching the Phonemic Awareness Mastery Program here, to focus on Phoneme Articulation and Phonemic Awareness. This will make learning with synthetic phonics easier for all.
However, by knowing each 'monster sound' (introduced within PAM) and with phonemic awareness (they can blend them together and also choose the right monster sounds when spelling words) they can continue at home with the 'monster mapped' tech and resources, figuring out unfamiliar words and THEN mapping the correct graphemes to those speech sounds. This will supplement their classroom learning experiences. I will also train professionals to deliver Speech Sound Mapping Therapy.
The phonemic awareness developed within PAM facilitates this new learning of phonics - however phonics is then taught. Not just because they develop phonemic awareness but because they quickly understand that the 'sounds' are specific ones (the Universal Spelling Code) - they are the Speech Sound King's 'sounds'. If they play different sounds the written word will not appear. They can 'see' and also 'hear' the connections that may not be as obvious when learning at school.
In Australia the teachers have the Speech Sound Puppets in classrooms
Says 'sdop'
Says 'monsdz'
Demonstrates learning
(voice now British)
If children only really focus on /æ/ as in 'sat', then what happens when it maps with the other 8 sounds? With good phonemic awareness, it only takes 1-4 exposures to store the word in their orthographic lexicon for instant recognition (reading) and retrieval (spelling). They are shown the spelling, know the sounds, so just make sure they know what the word means! Simple. This is why we are working on a 'clickable' library: children can click to access this information as and when needed.
Note: within the PSC only 2 are checked (/a/ as in sat and /a/ as in father)
Gifted, autistic children and those with ADHD find this way of learning exciting.
They WANT to read!
They become 'readies'
What's the Goal? A Love of Exploring Words
Reading for Pleasure is the Natural By-product of Word Mapping Mastery!
Embracing 'Different': Connecting Speech Sounds, Spelling, and Meaning by Focusing on Phonemic Awareness and Making the Whole Code Visible through Daily Speech Sound Mapping.
And now with MySpeekie: Every Child Has a Voice!
