Autistic Word Mappers: Authographic Mapping
Orthographic mapping is the universal process by which skilled reading develops. It’s not something we teach—it’s something they reach!
Time and time again, when supporting autistic children I demonstrate that existing theories about how to get learners there can (and should) be challenged.
Alf—pictured left—was, unfortunately, an instructional casualty when I first met him. None of his teachers realised he wasn’t 'getting' phonics for two main reasons. First, he lacked the phonemic awareness needed to understand the 'phoneme' part of the grapheme-to-phoneme mapping they were trying to teach using Read, Write, Inc. (print-to-speech). Second, he needs to learn primarily through 'speech-to-print' (encoding), starting from the whole word and THEN exploring the phoneme-to-grapheme mapping!
Word Mapping with Autism: Authographic Mapping
Teachers want to see "what works" in action. They want to see children at risk of struggling to read and spell—and those already struggling—and see what I do to change that. You’ll be able to follow Alf’s journey soon.
The gorgeous Alf is getting to know the new tech! By typing in Phonemies, he is developing awareness of the sounds in a word and their order. He then sees the word and can hear it voiced (it also functions as an AAC device).
He can also check the mapping to confirm which letters go together and which sounds map to those letters.
By using the 1, 2, 3 and Away! books, he can figure out the words—regardless of his GPC knowledge (separate from phonics lessons)—and THEN check the mapping. This is essential for him to learn to read. He loves the characters and is excited to explore the books.
Listen to Alf talking about the monsters!
When autistic children are shown the code—words mapped visually and linguistically—they understand the word and its parts, and fairly quickly learn to read because it makes sense. They are constantly mapping words in both directions and do not thrive with synthetic phonics programmes, which are almost entirely 'print-to-speech.' These 'SSP' programmes expect children to learn the 'sound value' of isolated graphemes and combine them to 'decode' words presented in plain black text.
This method is not a logical way for autistic minds to learn to map words and progress toward orthographic mapping. Instead, we call this process AUthographic mapping, as it better aligns with how autistic learners process and make sense of language. Autistic children are natural pattern seekers who love independent discovery learning.
Kensi was reading chapter books at age 4, having started using Speech Sound Monsters - Phonemies - and learning with the Speech Sound Pics (SSP) Approach in Australia when she was 2. She was diagnosed as autistic at age 5.
When you have met one autistic child you have met one autistic child. However Speech Sound Mapping is loved by all.
These autistic secondary school aged students are finally able to understand English orthography. Imagine if they had been taught in this way from reception. AUthographic Mapping is life changing!