This ten-day 'Phase 1' Speech Sound Play plan for Reception classrooms focuses on speech sound processing, the ability to hear, isolate, segment, and blend speech sounds. Developing phonemic awareness helps children understand that words are made up of individual sounds, and that these sounds can be represented by letters. Once children can hear, segment, and blend speech sounds, learning the role of letters in words becomes far more meaningful. During the ten-day plan, teachers are able to identify the 1 in 5 children at risk of dyslexia and begin offering the 1:1 support needed to prevent the dyslexia paradox. The dyslexia paradox refers to missing the window of opportunity to prevent literacy difficulties in school, between the ages of 5 and 7.

By Day 5 we introduce the first 'pictures' of the sounds, the graphemes s, a, t, p, i, n, and at the end of the ten-day play plan the children begin the Speech Sound Pics Approach or the systematic synthetic phonics programme used in their school. Phonemies (Speech Sound Monsters®) speed up the process of understanding how letters and sounds connect by making the sound value visible, starting with their names. We show children which letters connect together as graphemes and which speech sounds they represent. Phonemies show the code, so they are not restricted to the graphemes they are learning, and why mapping their names within the first couple of weeks is possible. They learn the Core Code, the correspondences tested in the Phonics Screening Check, and can also see how words with untaught correspondences, including high-frequency words, work. They aren't tricky!