What is the Speech Sound Pics (SSP) Approach?
Phonemic awareness is the ability to isolate, segment, and blend the smallest units of spoken words and is essential for children to learn to read and spell. Duck Hands develops this skill and can be used with children of any age throughout the day. Neural responses can provide essential information about the future development of language and literacy in children. The first months of life hold special significance for learning the phonemes of one’s first language, laying the groundwork for the later development of language and literacy.
By integrating Duck Hands and Word Mapping from birth, you can prevent reading and spelling difficulties for all children. Speech Sound Pics Approach teachers will Duck Hand the register, and map ANY words, at ANY time! When we map words we learn about English orthography in meaningful ways - not simply as part of planned 'lessons'. Words are all around us - what can we learn about them?
New! Letters and Sounds Phase 1 : Phonemic Awareness with Phonemies
The 10-Day Speech Sound Play Plan
Phonemic Awareness Mastery: A structured one-week programme that ensures children:
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Can isolate, blend, and manipulate sounds before phonics begins.
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Develop strong listening skills to reduce future reading difficulties.
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Are ready to make connections between speech sounds and written words.
We 'show the code' with our unique Code Mapping Tool and ensure that children understand the mapping of all words - which letters correspond with which phonemes? What do these words MEAN?
However Miss Emma realised that children needed the 'sound' value to be made visible too!
Help us in our quest to prevent reading and spelling difficulties by implementing Letters and Sounds Phase 1 - Phonemic Awareness Mastery with Phonemies! The 10 Day Plan
A dedicated week of phonemic awareness training before introducing graphemes offers several key benefits:
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Enhanced Auditory Discrimination:
Students learn to hear and distinguish individual sounds within words, laying a clear groundwork for later connecting these sounds to specific letters. -
Stronger Decoding Skills:
By practicing segmenting and blending sounds, learners build the essential skills needed to decode words quickly and accurately once graphemes are introduced. -
Improved Spelling Readiness:
Mastery of phonemes helps students understand how sounds combine to form words, making it easier to match those sounds to the correct letters when spelling. -
Smooth Transition to Orthographic Mapping:
With a solid phonemic foundation, learners are better prepared to engage in the mapping of phonemes to graphemes, which supports automatic word recognition. -
Increased Confidence and Engagement:
Spending focused time on phonemic awareness boosts confidence, ensuring that when graphemes are introduced, students are less overwhelmed and more receptive to the new challenge.
In short, this week of training equips students with the auditory and cognitive skills necessary to build a robust, lifelong foundation in reading and writing.
By exploring phonemic awareness with Phonemies we are also pro-actively including non-speaking children, who can now type WHATEVER THEY WANT TO SAY using Phonemies to generate words (even if they can't read them) and have them voiced aloud.
But they will also encourage children to explore how sounds and letters connect, so they can see the spelling of any word they choose throughout the day, outside of their phonics sessions and current phonics knowledge.
They offer "Instant Word Mapping – See the Spellings, Hear the Sounds, Anytime."
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Key benefits:
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Instant visualisation of all GPCs, including those not explicitly taught.
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Supports spelling and reading independent of phonics sequences.
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Works with any accent—no confusion when spelling.
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Miss Emma is passionate about prevention! She is seeking funding to develop a tech-based dyslexia screener for children under 3—before they even begin learning about letters and sounds.
Interested in getting involved?
Speech Sound Pics (SSP) Approach teachers are orthographically mapping words visually and linguistically—we show the graphemes using our unique code mapping system, highlighting black/grey distinctions and Phonemies, which are phonetic symbol alternatives.
The Speech Sound Pics (SSP) Approach is a method (or mindset!) used throughout the day to ensure that every child leaves Year 1 as a skilled reader and proficient speller! It is a way to offer children what THEY need to read, using technology that excites all neuro-types.
There is a half-hour 'explicit learning' routine for children learning the 100 or so high-frequency GPCs tested in the PSC and over 400 high frequency words eg was said because However, children work through this at their own pace—some are on the Green Code Level, building words with s, a, t, p, i, n, while others are working on what you might think of as Letters and Sounds Phase 5. They usually complete this 30-minute session around the end of Reception, although some may need more time.
The teacher sets up the routine and is free to observe while the children learn to use the GPCs using ICRWY technology. They use code-level texts but, by the end of the Purple Code Level, also explore the 1,2,3 and Away! series—orthographically mapped—so they actually get to use the 400+ high-frequency words in Reception in meaningful contexts.
By the main readers, they’re in the self-teaching phase (Share 1995, Ehri 2014).
The main focus is on understanding how written words work—phoneme-to-grapheme mapping, etymology, morphology, etc.—throughout the day. They don’t have to wait until they’ve learned certain GPCs to use words, as all words are made visible.
It’s an approach that offers personalised discovery learning, with ‘explicit’ in small writing (focus), leading children towards implicit learning (greater focus) as quickly as possible. We can only achieve this with amazing technology, that frees up the teacher. *
However, it does require a really, really good teacher leading it in the classroom—someone who understands learning differences as well as English orthography, and who is passionate about analysing learning to ensure there is less teaching and more learning. Most teachers these days don’t receive that level of training, support, or autonomy, which is such a shame.
Most think that 'phonics' equates with programmes and instructions about how to ‘teach it,’ as if all children in a neurodiverse classroom could ever get the most out of that. Phonics is simply the mapping of phonemes and graphemes in both directions, for all words. When kids understand that—and it’s remarkably easy to achieve without much instruction, as long as they have good phonemic awareness—reading becomes easy if they also have strong oral language skills. From there, they learn by reading more. Ensure they have good phonemic awareness before starting school, and very few will struggle.
Phonics is not a programme—any more than SoR is. Phonics is a method of teaching reading and spelling that focuses on the relationship between letters (graphemes) and speech sounds (phonemes). But that’s not how most people think of it. When they hear the word, they think of programmes—structured, one-size-fits-all approaches designed without knowing the child.
That’s why I avoided even using the word for about ten years in Australia. I was facilitating self-teaching and orthographic mapping with technology. Why? So that kids could read for pleasure—or to learn about whatever excites them! To empower them.
So what kind of phonics is SSP? That depends entirely on what the child needs. My job is to help teachers start where the child is. What do they need to begin self-teaching? We give them what they need, when they need it.
The goal? To make fluency and comprehension easier, so they can read for pleasure! After all, why are we teaching word mapping if not to help children navigate the written world around them?
Miss Emma
To learn more please attend training and read the chapter 'Visible Phonics- the Speech Sound Pics (SSP) Approach
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