We love our Little Mappers!
A uniquely mathematical approach to support speech and language skills, and to teach toddlers to read and spell in English, developed by 'Miss Emma'
Emma Hartnell-Baker managed two 'Outstanding' nurseries for eight years, and was an Early Years Regulatory Inspector for OFSTED before emigrating to Australia, where she launched 'Read Australia' and the Speech Sound Pics (SSP) Approach. She is now back in the UK and undertaking doctoral studies at the University of Reading:-)
Visit Ortho-Graphix - SpeechSoundPics.com and try the Orthographic Mapping Tool for free!
Emma Hartnell-Baker has developed a unique system to teach toddlers to speak and read in English. We are Monster Mappers!
This Ortho-Graphix system makes learning an opaque orthography much easier. It is mathematical. Children don't need to learn something and then 'unpair' those grapheme to phoneme correspondences, after the initial introduction to phonics. The correspondences align with the Universal Spelling Code and presented in a way that every child can understand. The characters DIRECTLY map to the phonemes - Monster Mapping!
This is different to the mapping most children are exposed to eg through Letterland, when embedded, or traditional 'print to speech' focused phonics, eg Jolly Phonics where graphemes and phonemes are firmly paired even if not actually on the letters. In those synthetic phonics programs children are taught to look at letters and say 'sounds'. eg to look at an /a/ and think of ants or an apple.
English Orthography is not 'transparent' - for example that /a/ can actually map to 9 different 'sounds'. As pattern seekers Miss Emma thinks this is far too limiting, and says more about beliefs around children and how they learn.
There is another way for children to learn to map speech sounds with their representations on paper - and to quickly start 'self-teaching'. Speech Sound Monsters are used as alternatives to phonetic symbols from the IPA (Universal Spelling Code) Children think of monster sounds mapping to a range of sound pics (graphemes) - depending on the word. They become pattern seekers. The explicit instruction using a set of 100 or so correspondences (the 4 code levels) are simply used as a kick-start to the learning to read and spell process - and children understand concepts more easily. From the very beginning they understand the concept of 'following the monster sounds to say the word' - and are interested in SEEING which Speech Sound Monsters are going to map with which Sound Pics! They are pattern seekers, excited about self-teaching.
Many children enter school with little or no phonemic awareness because it is not a cognitive capacity that is needed for either language learning or using language. Why does this matter?
Phonemic awareness in the early stages of reading, improves and accelerates learning to read, and at school entry is a strong predictor of their future reading ability.
Reading and phonemic awareness are mutually reinforcing: phonemic awareness is necessary for reading, and reading, in turn, improves phonemic awareness still further.
'I Can Read Without You (ICRWY) lessons with Ortho-Graphix is designed to ensure that all children start school with good phonemic awareness. Our Little Mappers enjoy speech & language therapy and orthographic learning play with Miss Emma's Speech Sound Monsters.
Most will be reading for pleasure before starting the Foundation Stage. This is the natural by-product, not the goal.
