Are Phonemies® embedded picture mnemonics? 

Research has shown that picture-embedded alphabet mnemonics are more effective than disassociated picture mnemonics for helping beginners learn initial grapheme-phoneme correspondences (Shmidman & Ehri, 2010). This is logical because the information is presented together. By embedding a familiar picture within the grapheme, children make fewer discrimination errors and remember the association more successfully. They can look at the letter <a>, for example, and parrot the sound /æ/. They can then look at a word such as ant and say the associated sounds /ænt/. Of course, that does not mean they can blend the sounds together to say the word, or spell words using those sounds if they cannot hear each sound or cannot segment and blend them.

Many phonics programmes do this. They introduce 'letters and sounds' by showing a grapheme with an embedded character, such as Annie Apple in Letterland. While this can help children remember an initial grapheme-phoneme correspondence when they look at the grapheme, the character has to be ignored whenever that grapheme represents a different phoneme. This happens very early. For example, after learning Annie Apple for <a>, children soon encounter the word a in a sentence such as It is a pan, where <a> represents a different phoneme.

Our approach is fundamentally different, as it assumes every child has poor phonemic awareness and cannot easily hear the sounds in words, segment (order) and blend them, let alone manipulate them. For example, what happens if I remove the /r/ from frog? They will not say it is now fog, even if they can tell you the associated sounds when looking at the graphemes <f>, <r>, <o> and <g>.

Children need to look at a character and think of the sound, not associate it with a grapheme or a word. They may not even pronounce the word in the same way that the phonics programme expects.

If characters are used with graphemes, they must represent phonemes, not graphemes. They must be speech sound characters.

Phonemies® (Speech Sound Monsters®) represent phonemes. They are never permanently linked to a particular grapheme. Instead, they are assigned only after a word has been mapped and the phoneme represented by each grapheme is known.

During the Core Code, children quickly learn the most commonly associated graphemes for each phoneme, but the association is clear. If they see the same Speech Sound Monster® on the <e> in red, the <ea> in tread, the <ai> in said and the <a> in any, it is easy to understand and creates no stress. When words are mapped and the phoneme is shown as a direct association with the grapheme, even if they then translate it to match their accent, it is similar to an adult learning English who looks up a word using the IPA transcription.

When Speech Sound Monsters® are displayed with text, whether embedded within graphemes, shown above them or shown below them, they are always assigned according to the phonemes represented in the mapped word, aligned with the British IPA. This is the system that systematic synthetic phonics is based on.

This means the same Speech Sound Monster® appears wherever the same phoneme occurs, regardless of which grapheme represents it. For example, the same Speech Sound Monster® appears on the <e> in end, the <a> in any and the <o> in women because those graphemes represent the same phoneme in those words. Likewise, the same Speech Sound Monster® appears on the <s> in sip and the <c> in cent because they represent the same phoneme.

Conversely, when the same grapheme represents different phonemes, different Speech Sound Monsters® are used. For example, the <a> in apple and the word a represent different phonemes, so different Speech Sound Monsters® are shown.

We can see which sounds the child hears when they do the Monster Routine, even if they are non-speaking. They start by laying out the sounds in the order they hear them. We can therefore use this as a diagnostic tool for phonemic awareness. This is the foundation of Dys-Code® screening for dyslexia risk at age three.

If a child's accent results in different phonemes being used, different Speech Sound Monsters® are assigned. As educators, we will understand why, as we know that child. It may be due to accent variation or challenges with phonemic awareness.

The spelling stays exactly the same, while the Phonemies® change to match the phonemes the child actually uses. Whether they are displayed independently, embedded within graphemes, above them or below them, Phonemies® always represent phonemes, never graphemes.

We do use picture-embedded mnemonics for letter formation because their purpose is different. For example, we use the Read Write Inc. letter formation phrases as seen here. A phrase such as "round the curly caterpillar" helps children remember the movement needed to form the letter correctly by remembering the correct starting point, direction and exit point. They are not being used to teach the phoneme represented by a grapheme within a word.

As far as we can determine from extensive patent searches, analyses of every DfE-validated phonics programme, reviews of many other phonics programmes used internationally, and examinations of publicly available AAC systems, Phonemies® are the world's first complete set of phoneme characters designed specifically for bidirectional word mapping across reading and spelling.

References

Ehri, L. C. (2014). Orthographic mapping in the acquisition of sight word reading, spelling memory, and vocabulary learning. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18(1), 5–21.

Shmidman, A., & Ehri, L. C. (2010). Embedded picture mnemonics to learn letters. Scientific Studies of Reading, 14(2), 159–182.