Speech Sound Mapping! Speech Sound Play (SSP) Before Speech Sound Pics® with Phonemies: A 10-Day Sound Start to Word Mapping Mastery for All Learners, using ReadABLE Words. Celebrating Diversity in Every Voice With MySpeekie®, the One-Screen AAC.
The Sound Learning Lab
Access the Sound Learning Lab to explore how Speech Sound Mapping can support unique learner needs at any age and stage of orthographic learning.
Orthographic learning is the process through which learners build knowledge of how spoken sounds map to written words. Word Mapping Mastery forms the foundation for reading and spelling, enabling children to recognise words by sight and apply spelling patterns with increasing accuracy and speed, even when they do not speak.
The Sound Learning Lab is a space designed for parents and carers who want to better support their child who has become an instructional casualty in an education system not designed to accommodate neurodivergent minds or learning differences.
Let us hold your hand, so you can more confidently hold theirs.
I cannot remain quiet.
These children need someone in their corner.
In the field of medicine, a one-in-four failure rate would not be blamed on the patient or on those administering the treatment.
And the latest advice? More of the same in Key Stage 2? Not only are the Department for Education refusing to prevent this crisis and immunise children against illiteracy, they are doubling down.
Are any of the phonics policymakers within the DfE neurodivergent? Synthetic phonics programmes ignore both linguistic and neurodiversity. Every child is assumed to be the same, so if they learn differently, they are seen as needing "special" education. That mindset must be challenged.
So I am prepared to face their wrath, to speak up, and to show schools how to do things differently, even when facing so many challenges.
Data source:
Key Stage 2 Attainment Statistics – explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk
Miss Emma
The Neurodivergent Reading Whisperer®
The Sound Learning Lab is being designed by The Neurodivergent Reading Whisperer, Emma Hartnell-Baker, specifically for parents of instructional casualties. These parents are not receiving the accurate, useful information they need to understand why their child is struggling to read and spell, despite having completed Key Stage 1 in England and been taught using a synthetic phonics programme.
Some systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programmes are worse than others, but at least one child in every class will become an instructional casualty, no matter how fabulous their teacher may be. Their hands are tied.
The Sound Learning Lab: Mapping Speech, Print and Meaning with Schema-Driven Support
We show how to prevent any child from experiencing learning difficulties when learning to read and spell, avoiding the dyslexia paradox, as it is much harder to address reading difficulties once a child has become an instructional casualty.
At least 95% of children are capable of reading with confidence and independence before the end of Year 1. This matters greatly in the context of formal schooling. When children enter Key Stage 2 without reading fluently, the gap between them and their peers begins to widen rapidly. They are less likely to want to read, less likely to choose to read, and more likely to fall further behind. This pattern is known as the Matthew Effect, where early success leads to more success, and early difficulties compound over time, making it increasingly difficult for struggling readers to catch up.
There is no statutory requirement for schools to carry out end of Key Stage 1 teacher assessment or testing that allows parents to check whether their child has entered the crucial self-teaching phase. Most reading is achieved through implicit learning, and phonics is intended to facilitate this. However, synthetic phonics programmes can make this process very difficult for many children. The Phonics Screening Check offers very little useful information in this regard.
This stage is critical for confirming whether phonological decoding is effectively supporting independent word learning. Parents and teachers are often not identifying when, or why, instruction in Key Stage 1 (Reception and Year 1) is failing to meet a child’s needs.
This lack of learning checks now also appears to be the case in Australia, where the PM Benchmarking system is being set aside.
Assessments are vital not only to show what a child has learned, but also to highlight gaps in teaching knowledge. We want to help prevent these issues by taking a proactive and preventative approach. Follow The Sound Learning Lab as we share suitable assessment tools and open up important discussions about change in the early years.
Although teachers are welcome – we are teachers – this space is being designed to better support the parents of children who have become instructional casualties. The teaching, so far, has not met their needs. This is not about blame; we understand that teachers are constrained by policy and budget-holder decisions. It is why we have designed the 10-day Speech Sound Play Plan – this will prevent many issues from occurring in the first place, and make learning to read and spell easier even while synthetic phonics programmes are mandated in England, where 1 in 4 children cannot read by the age of 11.
For instructional casualties we offer a unique intervention
ReadABLE Words – Making Every Word Readable for Every Learner
Are you a teacher, or school leader who wants to implement change, and focus on the unique needs of struggling readers?
Ask about the 10-Week Intervention Coach Training Package
You will learn how to meet the orthographic learning needs of autistic minds, such as the fabulous Alf, and how to better support children like Luca, who was diagnosed with dyslexia and completely failed by existing Department for Education (DfE) policies on the teaching of reading and spelling.
Teachers in England are being told to “teach more phonics”, when children are not reading independently when they leave KS1, yet most do not realise that this does not have to be through a synthetic phonics programme. More of what failed them in the first place is also not logical, and is seen by the children as babyish. They need something different.
All children need to develop orthographic knowledge, and while phonics is the route to introduce this, the how does not need to follow the typical pattern of introducing a small set of GPCs, using them within ‘decodable readers’, adding more GPCs (usually around 100 explicitly taught), and then hoping all children eventually enter the self-teaching phase.
There is another, simpler route - one that is schema-driven and shows the Code. This approach allows older children to explore the words they are interested in from as early as Day 11, and they will be able to work with age-appropriate material. It is also vital as it overcomes the reasons why the children couldn't learn to read and spell with synthetic phonics.
The 10-Day Plan featured here is designed for children aged 4 to 7. (It can be started earlier, with letter and number formation removed.) We are also about to launch the 10-Day Plan for older children (aged 7+) who have become instructional casualties, and the 10 Week Plan for SENDCos.
Bookmark this page!
Luca, about to move to secondary school, was still being given books like this one: Floppy’s Phonics. His teachers did not know how to help him. We did.
And we will show you how to help children like Luca too.
We help children master both reading and spelling by using technology, resources, and strategies that make an opaque orthography transparent. This has never been achieved before. Children do not need to wait for explicit phonics instruction to figure out the relationship between letters and sounds, whether decoding or encoding.
We have
- developed the world’s first one-screen communication technology (AAC), MySpeekie®.
- are the only in the world to show children (and teachers of phonics ) the speech sounds they may not hear, and the ‘pictures of sounds’ that make written English so confusing.
Simply implement the 10 day plan to develop phonemic awareness and phonological working memory, then introduce children to ReadABLE Words: Making Every Word Readable for Every Learner
We simplify complex language processing issues.
Because we know how to screen toddlers for dyslexia before they even start learning to read, and even if they are non-speaking, we can prevent reading and spelling difficulties altogether. We ensure that they have good phonemic awareness, so that they can use our tech to make words ReadABLE and SpellABLE.
Children who begin Speech Sound Play before the age of 3 never need to struggle with reading or spelling, and receive ongoing embedded speech and language thereapy.
It is still possible for older children (ages 3 to 6), but it becomes harder. Do not take the risk. No child deserves to experience learning difficulties, or to become an instructional casualty in a system not designed for them.
Are you the SEN Lead? Ask about the 10 Day Intervention Coach Training and Supervision Plan with Miss Emma herself