One, Two, Three and Away! The Print-to-Speech Bridge to Self-Teaching.
(Use Spelling Simplified to target Speech to Print)
The self-teaching phase is when children learn to read by reading. Each successful decoding of an unfamiliar word strengthens the bond between its spelling, speech and meaning, leading to automatic word recognition and increasingly fluent reading. Although the DfE expects systematic phonics programmes to provide sufficient support for every child to reach this phase, the reality is that at least one in four children need a bridge between explicit phonics instruction and independent self-teaching. We call that bridge Speedie Readies! We speed up the self-teaching phase by showing children the code they don't yet know, rather than expecting them to work it out through partial decoding, Set for Variability or phonological recoding.
Phonemies® are groundbreaking because they are the first visual system designed specifically to represent English phonemes, making the speech sounds in words visible and enabling the same system to support reading, spelling, writing and one-screen AAC. Training Hut: ShowTheCode.com
Many children move quickly into the self-teaching phase, while others need additional scaffolding for longer.
Phonics Reform England (PRE) Reform 6 argues that books should make the alphabetic code visible for as long as each individual child needs it, by showing which letters form graphemes and the sound values they represent.
For the one in five children with weaker phonemic awareness, decodable texts do not always provide enough support in the moment and reading may still be slow and effortful. They can spend too long trying to work out each word.
These children need more immediate support to access the speech sounds in words, together with clearer visual reinforcement of how speech and print connect.Without this, they may not reach the point at which self-teaching begins.
Data collected over more than five years with hundreds of children revealed a sweet spot. Once children could read levelled readers containing unfamiliar words, they often no longer wanted to continue reading those books. Instead, they wanted to begin a series that they could continue reading for pleasure. This is why we introduced the 1, 2, 3 and Away books as transition readers.
The science of reading explains why reading is not easy for all children and why explicit instruction, or exposure to materials that make the connection between phonemes and graphemes clear, matters for the development of bidirectional word mapping and orthographic knowledge. It does not prescribe a single classroom method, nor does it tell us how much explicit instruction each child needs or when they should transition to the self-teaching phase. We can see, from data in England, that we are still failing at least 1 in 5. The HOW of supporting self-teaching needs closer attention.
Bidirectional Word Mapping technology, powered by the Ortho-GraphiX® algorithm, makes the connection between phonemes and graphemes visible in every word, at the time of need. It supports decoding and spelling simultaneously and is used by really young children.
What we need are parents and teachers who understand bidirectional word mapping and are passionate about figuring out how much explicit instruction each child needs, and no more, so they can enter the self-teaching phase as quickly as possible and learn to read by reading. Avery's older brother (now five!) has already read almost 200 books. Amari will be reading independently long before he starts school.
We use The Village With Three Corners series of over 100 books to ensure that children aren't just great bidirectional word mappers, but also become great readers and spellers who develop a love of reading for pleasure from a young age.
Interested? Start Show the Code training on ShowTheCode.com for just £25/ approximately AU$45
Speedie Readies is a Specialist Course.
Miss Emma X
Emma Hartnell-Baker, MEd SEN
