How the IPA can help us teach phonics

Although no one would use phonetic symbols with young children, the reality is that many children are taught graphemes without fully understanding the speech sounds they represent.
The Code Mapping® Tool helps by visually mapping words to show the graphemes.
The Phonemies make the sound value of each grapheme visible, helping children connect speech sounds and letters with much greater clarity.
They also help children focus on the universal code, regardless of their accent.

Although accents matter less for decoding, due to set for variability, they become a major issue when encoding (spelling).
For example, a child might not say 'ant' with the speech sounds /æ/ /n/ /t/, but when blending those sounds for reading, they can easily adjust to their accent.
However, when spelling, if the word is not secure in the orthographic lexicon, the child will spell it using their own accent and the limited number of correspondences they know - that map to THEIR speech sounds.
An Australian child, for instance, might spell 'ant' as e/n/t or air/n/t.

By ensuring children understand the universal code — introduced through the story of the Speech Sound King's code, where he sends a magic ant to the Speech Sound Prince and must create 'pictures of speech sounds' to send the message not to open the pan — we build a much stronger, more flexible foundation for both reading and spelling.