Cue Code

​Why use cues when teaching phonics?

For all children, this approach is more engaging and helps to reinforce their developing orthographic knowledge. But for around one in four children, cueing is not just helpful, it is crucial.

Decades of research, including the National Reading Panel (2000) in the US, the Rose Review (2006) in England, and Australia’s National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy (2005), confirm that systematic phonics instruction is essential. Children must understand how speech sounds (phonemes) map to letters or letter groups (graphemes) to learn to read and spell.

Phonics teaches this mapping. However, English spelling is complex and irregular, which makes these connections difficult to grasp. For many children, especially those with weak phonemic awareness, phonics instruction can feel confusing or incomplete (Seymour, Aro, and Erskine, 2003; Ziegler and Goswami, 2005).
 

Around one in four children start school unable to clearly hear the individual sounds in words. They will struggle to blend those sounds when reading or to segment them when spelling. Some children develop phonemic awareness easily, starting school with good PA, and able to read regardless of how phonics is taught, while others need explicit support. Synthetic phonics instruction may not help to develop phonemic awareness and phonological awareness. So 1 in 4 learners, when taught with specific phonics programmes, often find it especially hard to connect speech sounds to letters in unfamiliar words.

Cue Code changes that by making the mapping visible for all. No teaching is required. The mapping is simply shown! We show the code.

The Speech Sound Pics (SSP) Approach teaches phonics systematically within the 30-Minute Routine, but is not restricted to print-tospeech (which sound does this letter make - a for apple etc) and so would be called Visual and Linguistic Phonics rather than synthetic phonics. Children work through the Core Code - the GPC taught content - at their pace. While the GPC content and suggested learning order aligns with the DfE recommendations, the approach is designed for personalised learning. It recognises and embraces differences in how they learn. Not all children pronounce words in the same way, and by playing with the Phonemies they can explore and talk about these differences. A preventative approach is taken, to bypass the dyslexia paradox, ensuring that children at risk of reading difficulties are identified and supported and do not become instructional casualties. 

Cue Code applies a unique system that shows both the graphemes in the word and the sound value each one represents. This removes the need to guess or memorise whole words. For example, the same speech sound monster (from the Phonemies Family) appears at the start of England and in, and the same in Australia and on. Cue Code makes this obvious by highlighting the grapheme and attaching a visual cue called a Phonemie to show the sound.
 

Phonemies are aligned with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), the system linguists use to represent all the sounds in spoken language. While the IPA is used by speech therapists and used to denote the expected responses in the Phonics Screener Check for teachers it is rarely taught in schools and would be developmentally inapproprate for children. They are learning to use letters and sound symbols, and so a second set of symbols would be confusing. However the concept is perfect for children at every stage!
Cue Code makes it child-friendly and accessible, understood by toddlers! The visual cues help children recognise the speech sound linked to each grapheme, even when the spelling is unfamiliar.
 

Cue Code is not an alternative to phonics, it is an add-on. It is phonics, made visible, precise, and accessible to all learners.

This is enhanced phonics. It is linguistic and visual. It gives children direct access to the logic of written English and supports the development of orthographic knowledge. With Cue Code, children who struggle with traditional phonics are empowered to see the structure of words. This understanding allows them to read with confidence (Ehri, 2005; Share, 1995; Castles, Rastle, and Nation, 2018).