The Speech Sound Pics (SSP) Approach re-wires ALL brains for reading and spelling, by overcoming oral language, phonemic awareness and auditory processing issues and paving the way for an easier transition to cracking the Big Six!

Early Literacy Skills - including oral language and concepts of print Phonemic Awareness Coding (Phonics) to Spelling Fluency Vocabulary Comprehension Sight words also taught through Fast Mapping, a world first! The quickest, easiest way to learn sight words, and the kids LOVE learning words with Taylor Swift etc. www.codedsightwords.com

s/i/p

Phonemic Awareness is not Phonics. It is the ability to isolate speech sounds in spoken words, segment (order) manipulate and blend them.

____ _____ ______ 1 2 3

This helps with segmenting (order of sounds from left to right) and

blending into whole words.

."Once children can discriminate separate phonemes (that is, can answer questions like those in the phoneme isolation section), letter-sound relationships can be introduced, as both phonemic and phonic skills can be taught simultaneously from this point. When letters are first introduced, they should be referred to by the sound they represent, not by the letter name." The guidelines presented by the SA Education Department

The development of ‘Phonemic Awareness’ is the reason we used Duck Hands, Lines and Numbers, and are able to wire ALL brains for coding (phonics). This means fluency and comprehension can develop. Research identifies this mental process as crucial to the development of word recognition and spelling. Phonemic awareness is a term used to describe one’s ability to perceive the identities and order of sounds within spoken words. In the absence of adequate phonemic awareness, the reader must rely heavily on context cues (guessing at words) and on visual memory for the correct letters in the correct sequence in order to recognize words and interact with print. The use of these strategies alone generally results in independent reading levels significantly below intellectual potential. Estimates of the number of individuals who have difficulty perceiving the sounds in words (phonemic awareness) range from 10-33 percent of the population. Phonemic awareness is not phonics. Students with limited phonemic awareness will have trouble acquiring the alphabetic principle, which in turn will limit their ability to decode words (Blachman, 1991) and will not benefit from phonics (Juel, Griffith, & Gough, 1986).

A long line of research now agrees that phonemic awareness is the best predictor of the ease of early reading acquisition, better than IQ, vocabulary, and listening comprehension. (Stanovich, 1993-94) “One of the most compelling and well-established findings in the research on beginning reading is the important relationship between phonemic awareness and reading acquisition.” (Kame’enui, et. al., 1997) Yes, there really is a difference in brain activation patterns between good and poor readers. We see the difference when people carry out phonologically based tasks. And that tells us that the area of difficulty - the functional disruption - in poor readers relates to phonological analysis. This suggests that we focus on phonological awareness when trying to prevent or remediate the difficulty in poor reading. (Shaywitz, 1999) The research further suggests that by the age of five, 80% of children have phonemic awareness skills, while 20% don’t. Without proper assessment and training, those who lack this cognitive skill at the age of five are likely to lack it at the ages of 15, 25, and 65 too. Because simple phonological awareness tasks help facilitate early reading and writing, they are highly relevant to spelling. The task of separating words into individual phonemes has been found to be a strong predictor of spelling ability (Nation & Hulme, 1997). More: ReadAustralia.com

."Once children can discriminate separate phonemes (that is, can answer questions like those in the phoneme isolation section), letter-sound relationships can be

introduced, as both phonemic and phonic skills can be taught simultaneously from this point. When letters are first introduced, they should be referred to by the

sound they represent, not by the letter name."

The guidelines presented by the SA Education Department show that SSP is a perfect fit !

The document clearly shows that any program asking teachers to starts with phonics from day 1 - eg teaching a 'letter sound per day from day 1 of Prep' is not in line with

their recommendations. SSP is actually the only program with a Phase 1 stage ie pure phonemic

awareness.

Week 1 and often also week 2 of Prep are spent with a focus on pure phonemic awareness, ie wiring brains for reading and spelling, without the visual confusion of

letters, and oral language.

PA training continues throughout all three main phases, of course.

However Phase 1 means that all children receive around 20 hours of phonemic awareness training, before being introduced to the code, which is supported by

research.

Research studies suggest that for most children, a complete phonemic awareness program should take no more than around 20 hours in total (NICHD, 2000;

Armbruster, Lehr & Osborn, 2003) Also note the reference to the teaching of letter names. It is recommended that

students are NOT taught using letter names in the early stages. Again, as shown within SSP planning.

From http://www.decd.sa.gov.au/

SSP is also the only program in the world to further develop phonemic awareness through the teaching of high frequency words , often called ‘sight words’. It is a myth that all children can memorise whole words using Look, Cover, Say, Write and retain them or effectively recall them for spelling well enough for this to be an efficient teaching strategy. We use a technique called SSP Fast Mapping, and children not only spell them using the SSP Spelling Strategy but also ‘Duck Hand’ them. Phonemic awareness is used to isolate the speech sounds, segment and blend them. Coding is used to make letter string choices. No, they can't be 'sounded out' using 'phonics programs ' (as you can see when programs call them 'tricky words') and this is why SSP is not a phonics program, it’s a Coding Program that is based on the brain, and how wired. It's again why SSP is different to anything else in the world. Phonics quite simply does not go far enough, and why children spell 'was' as 'wos' and 'said' as 'sed'. So what do phonics programs they tell the kids? Learn them as 'sight words'. And yet phonics is supposed to be about linking speech sounds to their representations on paper? A bit confusing for children, and not a consistent, clear message about what reading and spelling is. What is writing? A way to talk on paper. With SSP only two words in the WHOLE of the English language can't be 'sounded out'. Sceptical? Ask a student to give you the speech sounds in ANY word and then look at the Spelling Clouds.

If the sound pic is only used in that word, it goes on the outside of the cloud (wo in the word t/wo ach in the word y/ach/t) however if the students can find more than 1 word, that uses that sound pic to represent the speech sound, it goes IN the Spelling Cloud. As children are involved in this through Inquiry Learning they more easily make connections and develop new pathways. 99% of all words are easy to 'map‘ using SSP. Only 'one' and 'once' can‘t be mapped; the links between speech and sound pics for all others are really straight forward when you start from speech, and split words into ‘pure’ speech sounds and not syllables or consonant blends. Again why SSP is not a phonics program. Tell children 'a' says 'aye' and the brain becomes confused. The letter 'a' actually represents about 8 different speech sounds, even just sitting on it's own. Think of 'any' 'water' 'was' 'another' etc. This is why so many try to make up spelling rules. Start from speech and the brain gets it- you are starting from what it knows. Take a Speech to Print approach, not a Print to Speech. Fast mapping occurs from one or a few exposures (McGregor, 2004), in this case to a seen written word and a heard spoken word close in time, forming a connection between them through association. Once the cross-word-form map is completed, the child automatically recognizes the word, that is, can pronounce it or recognize it through inner speech. Teachers often refer to words learned through fast mapping as sight word vocabulary, but orthographic and phonological codes are involved not just primary visual regions of brain. Send colleagues to www.codedsightwords.com

Visual difficulties are only at fault in about 10 percent of dyslexia and other cases involving struggling readers. The most common cause, is a difficulty in relating the visual form of a letter or string of letters to it’s speech sound. SSP instruction can use the plasticity of the human brain to gain an educational improvement. Focused instruction can help underperforming brain areas to increase their proficiency. Numerous studies have used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the changes in a number of cortical regions located in the parietotemporal area, which is responsible for decoding the sounds of written language and assembling them into words and phrases that make up a sentence.

Brains can be trained to re-structure (re-wire). Brain Plasticity” is the ability of the brain to change through experience & learning. For the brain to ‘re-wire’, certain conditions must be met. These conditions or “learning principles” have been identified as repetition, adaptivity to a person’s skill level, motivation, and immediate feedback. SSP facilitates these conditions. The Conductor’s role is to orchestrate optimum conditions for each student; adapting activities to excite and challenge each student, offering immediate feedback, and promoting an intrinsic desire to learn. ·

Memory –working, short-term and long-term memory which are essential for word recognition, comprehension and remembering instructions. Attention –the ability to focus on information and tasks and ignore distractions Processing Speed –the rate at which we are able to process incoming information. For reading, this is how quickly one can distinguish speech sounds and identify letters and words to create meaning. Sequencing –the ability to determine the order of letters within words or words within sentences.

‘More than just coding’ Early Literacy Skills - including oral language and concepts of print Phonemic Awareness Coding (Phonics) to Spelling Fluency Vocabulary Comprehension are all developed far more quickly and easily. Also as SSP is FUN !