Use the Speech Sound Play Plan before teaching any phonics programme, not just the Speech Sound Pics Approach, to screen for dyslexia risk by assessing phonemic awareness and phonological working memory. Letters that function as graphemes in words are known as sound pictures, that is, Speech Sound Pics, and introduced early.
Speech Sound Play Plan Activities
Speech Sound Play is a pre-phonics, speech-to-print foundation.
It prepares children to hear individual speech sounds and blend them into words, and to understand that graphemes are pictures of speech sounds. We call these sound pictures Speech Sound Pics®.
The Speech Sound Play Plan strengthens speech sound processing, which is essential if children are to learn to read and spell with ease. Children with strong phonemic awareness can isolate, segment, and blend phonemes and it is easier for them to understand how spoken sounds connect to written forms.
The 10-Day Speech Sound Play Plan is designed for use in Reception before formal phonics teaching begins. It supports early screening for dyslexia risk and builds children’s awareness of how speech and print connect, while developing the speech sound processing skills that later phonics instruction relies on.
Speech Sound Play can be used at any age however. Start from birth! You can slow the pace and spend as much time as children need, particularly when working in the early years. This flexibility matters as whole-class pacing or curriculum pressures can push children into graphemes before their speech sound foundations are secure. Children who start phonics with good phoemic awareness are better protected from difficulties.
⭐ Train with me and I will support you for as long as you need me. Emma Hartnell-Baker
Emma Hartnell-Baker MEd SEN| Expert in Preventing the Dyslexia Paradox. Train with me at SpeedieReadies.com
You know the words - so what are the monster sounds?
This demonstrates what is called an opaque orthography.
Two-Hour Speech Sound Play training for individuals, early years centres and schools
To ensure that every child you support learns to read and spell with ease and joy, you will need to start with the Speech Sound Play Plan so that they will understand phonics ie when they need to connect those speech sounds to graphemes. Even if you don't teach them phonics, these activities get their brains ready to connect speech and print easily, and they overcome the high-risk factors many children start school with, regardless of how bright they are or how often you read to them. Speech Sound Play in the early years prevents the dyslexia paradox because children become less reliant on the quality of instruction when they start school. We are preparing their brains to be taught to read in any way their teachers teach them. The way reading and spelling is taught varies around the world, and at least one in four children is failed in every country at the moment. We can change that by using the Speech Sound Play Plan for upstream screening and support.
It naturally leads into the Speech Sound Pics® (SSP) Approach in a classroom setting, or into Speedie Readies: Show the Code on a one-to-one basis, supporting the dual route towards Word Mapping Mastery and orthographic mapping.
We offer a two-hour training session dedicated to the Speech Sound Play Plan and a two-hour session for Speedie Readies.
Speedie Readies is delivered 1:1 by adults who do not need to be teachers.
You can use this to support at-risk children regardless of the phonics programme being used in class by the Reception or Year 1 teacher.
Those trained in Speech Sound Play AND the Speedie Readies system, will be fantastic teachers of reading and spelling! They will understand how to support all children, including those who are neurodivergent, non-speaking or who do not speak English as a first language.