Self-Paced phonics in the classroom setting: The Speech Sound Pics (SSP) Approach, with the Ten Day Speech Sound Play Plan, part of the Word Mapping Mastery system®. Letters that function as graphemes in words are known as sound pictures, that is, Speech Sound Pics. We show the Code through the Code Mapping Algorithm, with Phonemies - Speech Sound Monsters - making the sound value visible.
What Is an Opaque Orthography?
English is an opaque orthography. That means the relationship between letters and speech sounds is not one-to-one or consistent.
In some languages, one letter usually represents one sound. English doesn’t work like that.
The same grapheme can represent different phonemes:
-
a → /æ/ in cat
-
a → /ɑː/ in father
-
a → /ɒ/ in was
The same phoneme can be spelled in multiple ways:
-
/iː/ in see, sea, me, happy
-
/eɪ/ in day, rain, break, they
-
/f/ in fish, phone, laugh
English spelling reflects history, meaning and sound change. It is structured, but it isn’t transparent.
Why Basic Phonics Isn’t Enough
In the early stages of phonics, children are often taught that:
-
One sound links to one grapheme
-
One grapheme represents one sound
That works at the very beginning. But it doesn’t hold true for long.
Once children move beyond basic correspondences, graphemes begin to represent multiple possible sounds. The letter a alone can represent several. So can e, i, o, u, c, g, and many digraphs.
If a child’s only visual anchor is the letter itself, confusion increases as the code expands.
Why SSP Teachers Use Phonemies®: Speech Sound Monsters
Because English is opaque, children need a stable visual for the speech sound itself, not just the letter.
Phonemies® are Speech Sound Monsters that represent the phoneme, not the grapheme.
They give children:
-
A consistent visual identity for each speech sound
-
A way to separate sound from spelling
-
A stable reference point when one sound has many spellings
-
Support when one grapheme represents different sounds
The speech sound stays constant. The spelling can change.
Phonemies® make the phoneme visible, even when there is no single reliable grapheme to attach it to.
Why Embedded Picture Mnemonics Only Work at the Beginning
Many early phonics programmes use embedded mnemonics, where a letter contains a picture cue. For example:
-
An a shaped like an apple
-
An s shaped like a snake
This can help at the very start, when children are learning a small set of simple correspondences.
But as soon as:
-
A letter represents more than one sound
-
A sound has multiple spellings
-
Words no longer match the original picture cue
the mnemonic breaks down.
The picture is tied to a single spelling. It can’t stretch across the full complexity of English.
In an opaque orthography, children need a sound-based anchor, not a letter-based picture cue.
Showing which letters function as graphemes, and their sound value with the Phonemies®, reduces cognitive load. As seen on the One, Two, Three and Away! with The Code Overlay page, children can see the full structure of words within real stories. They don’t have to wait.
Rather than waiting to learn hundreds of grapheme–phoneme correspondences before being able to read authentic texts, we make all words decodable by showing the letters that function as graphemes and the phonemes they represent in that word.
We couldn’t do that without Speech Sound Monsters.
Learn more about phonics and 'word mapping' here on the Speedie Readies site.