The Reading Framework explains “why teachers themselves also need to understand the alphabetic code: evidence supports the key role of phonic knowledge and skills in early reading and spelling.” (Department for Education, 2023, p. 5)
When helping children to write teachers will support children to identify the phonemes in a spoken word, and show them the graphemes that represent those phonemes. Using MyWordz® technology to Code Map words (showing which letters are graphemes) teachers can guide children in both directions: speech to print and also print to speech mapping.
We offer a pre-training check on Show the Code - our training site. Can you map words with confidence, in both directions?
Speedy Paired Writing
We love this activity for older children who are struggling with writing, as it builds the orthographic knowledge needed for accurate bidirectional word mapping.
Liv is doing it at home with her Mummy.
The SSP Approach 'Speedy Paired Writing' activity.
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Choose a picture prompt to talk about.
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Decide on a grammatically correct short sentence that the child can hold in short-term memory.
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The child writes it in the way they think it is constructed, including the spelling and punctuation.
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Read it together, using Duck Hands to identify each word and underlining the Sound Pics (graphemes).
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Check any words they are unsure of using the tech, then Monster Map them with the Monster Spelling Mat tiles.
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The parent shows the correctly mapped text, although discussion and challenges are encouraged.
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The child corrects their own work.
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Put the correct version away.
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The parent dictates the same sentence and the child writes it again.
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This time, they use what they learned from correcting their first attempt to self-check as they write.
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Choose at least one word the child was unsure of and complete the 60 Second Spelling Routine to strengthen the bond between its speech sounds, spelling and meaning within the orthographic lexicon.