The Speech Sound (Phonemic Awareness) Play Plan: A Speech-to-Print ‘Pre-Phonics Phasse, Find out why it matters on Phonics Reform England (PRE)
The Upstream Team are seeking funding to roll out free dyslexia risk screening and support for all children when they turn 3, before they start learning phonics. Supporting a dyslexic child? Visit Recoding for Dyslexia
A Message from Rory's Mum.
When our eldest son was in Grade 3 he was diagnosed with dyslexia. Unfortunately by then the damage was done, his reading age was assessed as being below the age of six (he was 8.5 at the time). The most heart-breaking part of his journey was the devastating effect it had on his self-esteem.
The psychologist at the time introduced me to the Speech Sound Pics SSP approach, which turned out to be life-changing! Under Miss Emma's guidance, we cleared the slate and started his journey again at home after school. He warmed very quickly to the approach and in just five weeks he had increased six reading levels. I am extremely proud to announce that he is now in Grade 6 and reading at grade level!! In fact, he is doing so well that in his LP meeting recently I was questioned whether he even had a learning disability.
This brings us to Rory, our youngest. From a young age, he showed signs of possessing the same strengths and weaknesses as his older brother. Not willing to sit back and watch him suffer the same fate we jumped at the chance to be part of the ICRWY 'Speech Sound Monster Mapping' pilot, he was two months shy of his fifth birthday at the time.
Now at six, he is doing so well, this video is proof of that. This is Rory reading his home reader to me. So proud and so very grateful for Miss Emma and her innovative ideas and approach.
Reading and spelling are only part of the picture. Language and literacy challenges affect the whole family, and support should match the way you believe your child learns best.
A few of the things we will be talking about as Dyslexia Whisperers!
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Chunking Learning and Information:
Breaking down information into smaller, manageable parts can make it easier to process. We will do that when teaching them to map words, and to read with fluency and comprehension.
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Visual Aids and Multi-sensory Learning:
Utilising visually mapped words, coding words, and learning with multi-sensory activities can enhance the process. Mapped Words® and Books are a game changer!
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Systematic Phonics-Based Instruction:
The Speech Sound Pics (SSP) approach focuses on the relationship between letters and sounds, crucial for those with dyslexia.
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Repetition and Review:
Repeated reading and practice help build fluency and reinforce skills with the SSP Routines.
Assistive Technology:
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Text-to-Speech Software:
MySpeekie® technology converts written text into spoken words, and has the additional bonus not offered elsewhere, as we show the grapho-phonemic structure, aiding comprehension.
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The Word Mapping tools map words in both directions - reducing cognitive load for dyslexic learners and increasing confidence
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Speech-to-Text Software:
This allows individuals to dictate instead of writing, and the writing is shown - showing the spelling of the words.
Dyslexic Brains
Children with dyslexia often have underlying difficulties with phonemic awareness and phonological working memory, which make it harder for them to learn phonics. Phonics instruction relies on the ability to isolate, segment, and blend sounds, as well as to hold sound sequences in memory while linking them to letters. Because these processes are impaired, dyslexic learners struggle to connect graphemes to phonemes, even for the most common patterns. To compensate, they often begin to memorise whole words. This may give the appearance of early progress, but it bypasses the self-teaching mechanism, where readers use knowledge of sound–letter relationships to decode unfamiliar words and build orthographic knowledge. Synthetic phonics programmes explicitly teach only around 100 correspondences. Without mastering even these, reading development tends to slow. Spelling remains especially difficult, fluency is compromised, and motivation often decreases. These children may begin to avoid reading and writing because each word demands sustained effort and fails to become automatic.
Screen at Three. Rewire Sound Processing. Dyslexia Re-RoutED.
MyWordz® with MySpeekie® – The Missing Link to Orthographic Mapping
A Breakthrough for Neurodivergent Brains
Shows the Code and Blends the Word Until Dyslexic Learners Can Do It Themselves.
Mapped Words: A breakthrough for Dyslexic Learners
Mapped words take the guesswork out of reading and spelling. Instead of asking children to memorise whole words or rely only on the grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences they know so fars, each word is broken down into its speech sounds and linked directly to the letters that represent them. This makes the hidden structure of English visible.
For dyslexic learners, this is powerful because their difficulty often lies in connecting sounds to letters quickly and consistently. When the mapping is shown clearly, they can see which letters go together and which sound each part represents. This reduces memory load, builds confidence, and supports true understanding rather than rote recall.
Over time, repeated exposure to mapped words helps the dyslexic brain store words accurately, making reading and spelling more automatic. It opens the same pathway to independent reading and writing that many non-dyslexic learners reach more easily, but with the scaffolding dyslexic children need.
To prevent reading and spelling difficulties:
1. Prioritise phonemic awareness and phonological working memory.
Ensure that every child completes the 10-day Phonemic Awareness Mastery Plan. This acts as an essential early screening tool. Teachers will quickly identify which children cannot hear, segment, or blend speech sounds. These children can then begin targeted activities to develop their phonemic awareness before they are expected to connect sounds to letters. Teachers can monitor this progress and provide ongoing support. They blend lots of words, and are not restricted to 2 or 3 sound words.
2. Use Duck Hands® and Code Mapping® with Phonemies to make the speech–print connection visible.
All children should use Duck Hands® to identify how many sounds are in a word — even if they cannot hear the sounds clearly yet. They should be taught to see words as pictures of speech sounds (Speech Sound Pics®) with graphemes clearly highlighted through Code Mapping. This allows learners to see which letters work together (graphemes), and which sounds they represent (phonemes). These visual connections strengthen word learning and prevent the difficulties that many children — not only those with dyslexia — face when instruction assumes phonemic awareness has already developed. The MyWordz® with MySpeeie® tech blends the sounds when dyslexic students cannot do it themselves.
3. Teach words in meaningful context.
Avoid using isolated word lists or flashcards. Children need to encounter words in sentences, books, and real-world use. This supports vocabulary development and helps them draw on all available cues to figure out words they cannot yet decode. However, it's important to recognise that without visual support from a trained teacher or the MyWordz® with MySpeekie® tech, many children will struggle to recode words. Recoding is an essential part of learning to read and spell.
What is recoding?
Recoding is the process of using knowledge of letter–sound relationships to access the spoken form of a word from its written form. Even when a child manages to figure out a word, they must recode it in order to store it in the brain’s word bank — the orthographic lexicon. This process is essential for developing reading fluency and confident spelling.
To achieve orthographic mapping, children must connect print to speech and speech to print. Orthographic mapping is the most widely accepted theory explaining how children learn to read and spell.
Dyslexic learners may learn to read reasonably well, often through effortful strategies or memorisation, but without secure orthographic mapping, spelling continues to be a struggle. They need clear, repeated exposure to the sound–letter structure of words to store them for fast recognition and retrieval in writing.
Use MyWordz® to show the code in both directions.
MyWordz® helps children see and hear the code — it blends sounds for them and shows how letters map to phonemes. This supports the learning process for all children, especially those with dyslexia and related difficulties.
Buy the tech for £75 at: https://MyWordz.tech
More information: https://MyWordz.com