Information for Professionals
This page explains our approach to early dyslexia risk screening in Reception and Year 1. It follows IDA and Delphi guidance that highlights early signs linked to dyslexia risk, including weak phonemic awareness, difficulties with phonological working memory, which will likely create challenges with learning phonics. Blending and segmenting skills are essential for learning phonics, so identifying children who need extra support in term 1 prevents the dyslexia paradox, where pupils do not receive help until difficulties have become entrenched. The page outlines how teachers and TAs use Duck Hands and satpin Visual Prompts to screen all children fairly, including non speaking pupils, however the main focus for the pilot is the personalised support given to children by the TA.. The Speedie Readies system is evidence based, inclusive, and designed to ensure that children receive the help they need, as individuals, as early as possible.
Teaching assistants will learn to spot the 1 in 5 who can't isolate, segment and blend speech sounds. We do this after introducing children to Duck Hands for a week, in term 1 of reception (called Prep in Queensland) with the 'visual prompts' for satpin words ie all the words are spoken with the speech sounds s æ t p ɪ n. These are phonetic symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and used by speech thereapists to denote speech sounds. Letters don't represent sounds until in word (think ant any water father was orange another table scary
When screening the 135 reception children in 45 minutes here I'm not using the visual prompts, as there are no non-speaking children in the group. But if there were, they would be familiar with them. There are no letters used when screening for dyslexia risk factors in term 1 of reception.
Speedie Readies: Ten Minutes a Day, TA Pilot Overview
This Speedie Readies pilot is designed to prevent the phonics or dyslexia intervention that typically takes place after children have already begun to struggle to map words. It aims to prevent the dyslexia paradox, where children who are clearly at risk are not supported until they have already begun to fail at reading and are struggling with spelling. Dyslexia screening generally refers to screening with graphemes, that is, after at least one year of explicit phonics instruction.
This pilot provides early and meaningful support that strengthens the foundational skills needed for reading success, particularly phonemic awareness and phonological working memory, before reading failure occurs. This support is offered before children begin to struggle to connect letters and sounds within whole class phonics lessons.
A key purpose is to find out whether strong results can be achieved when the prevention of the intervention is delivered by a teaching assistant, ensuring no additional workload for the class teacher. The project also examines whether this approach helps to empower TAs and make them more confident in supporting early literacy development by preventing difficulties in mapping speech and print. They will be supported to understand dyslexia risk screening and support, to prevent the intervention. Upstream screening is at the centre of the Speedie Readies eco-system, which is designed to facilitate earlier and easier self-teaching and ultimately orthographic mapping for all before the end of Year One. Children can then learn more about reading by reading and writing. Most discovery of statistical learning takes place through implicit learning but 1 in 4 are not reaching that phase in England with whole class phonics lessons in Reception and Key Stage One alone.
Who are We?
I’m Emma Hartnell-Baker and I have a Masters degree in Special Education Needs. I’m undertaking doctoral research at the University of Reading, studying how teachers make decisions when asked to support children to map words that contain GPCs not covered in their synthetic phonics programme, for example sugar. I have taught full time in school managed nurseries inspected as outstanding, and I have served as an OFSTED Inspector with responsibility for inspecting Early Years settings. I also worked for the Queensland Education Department advising schools on behaviour and spent ten years supporting schools to improve literacy school wide. My approach there is called the Speech Sound Pics (SSP) Approach. It is a visual and linguistic approach to phonics, taught differently because children work through the GPCs tested in the PSC at their pace. I still train teachers to use Duck Hands to segment words, and to use and teach children 'The Monster Spelling Routine" in all primary grades.
Dr Grace Elliott provides professional diagnostic assessments for dyslexia and dyscalculia. She has more than fifteen years of experience as an assessor, SENCO, and teacher of SEND, with APC, ATS, PG Cert SENCO, and AMBDA. After completing an MSc at Oxford University focusing on dyslexia, she completed a PhD to investigate effective intervention for children with reading difficulties. Grace has published articles and presented at conferences within the UK and internationally, and she most recently worked at the British Dyslexia Association as the Professional Practice Manager.
We met at a conference and have collaborated on several projects including delivering training for PATOSS and presenting at the World Literacy Foundation. We are both AuDHD and Grace is dyslexic.
Libby Charlton reached out after attending the PATOSS training and has since added the Phonemies to her work in schools, with significant improvements in outcomes. Libby is dyslexic and brings a strong professional background to this work. She holds AMBDA, a Level 7 PG Diploma from Bath Spa University, and Qualified Teacher Status. She has an Assessment Practising Certificate, full membership of PATOSS, and an FE Teaching Practice Certificate from City and Guilds, Stage 1 and 2. Libby also holds a BA Hons in Contemporary Dance with first class honours, as well as RAD and ISTD teaching certificates in ballet, modern, and national dance.
Our experiences in schools, supporting children who learn differently, together with our own lived experience, mean that we bring considerable passion to this work. We are all concerned about the impact of a one size fits all approach and the lack of upstream screening, because we see the consequences in classrooms every day.
Earlier this year Emma Hartnell-Baker scored 85 percent in the Women in Innovation competition from Innovate UK. The aim was to fund a screener for three year olds, before they start learning phonics. Below you will see the basics we use to introduce how speech sounds connect with print using Duck Hands and Phonemies, even with just the first six, to reduce cognitive load.
Why Early Identification and Early Support Matter
The International Dyslexia Association highlights the importance of early signs linked to dyslexia risk, such as weak phonemic awareness, including difficulties with oral blending and segmentation, and poor phonological working memory. The IDA guidance explains that children who show these early indicators are likely to struggle to acquire grapheme to phoneme knowledge unless they receive targeted support. The Delphi consensus group also emphasises early signs such as difficulties with identifying and manipulating speech sounds, slow development of phonological memory, and challenges with early letter to sound mapping.
Around one in five children show these early risk indicators. These difficulties are not linked to intelligence and are seen in children who are bright, curious, verbal, confident, and capable. Without early support these children are more likely to find phonics difficult because they have not yet developed the underlying speech sound skills that phonics instruction relies on. Unfortunately, many children who are very resourceful and strong problem solvers can mask these difficulties and fly under the radar because they appear to be coping in class. They can memorise rather than master and may mirror their peers. It is important that we screen early and identify children who are not processing these sounds, early enough to do something about it without them thinking there is anything wrong. We are not waiting for children to struggle, we are preventing difficulties.
Current checks do not identify these early signs. The Phonics Screening Check in Year 1 is too late for prevention and it does not isolate phonemic awareness. The PSC therefore cannot identify the one in five children who are at risk because of weak phonemic awareness or phonological working memory. These skills need to be identified in term 1 of Reception, long before they begin to affect progress. This also means that more children will pass the PSC as there are fewer barriers.
Nadine Gaab’s research shows that waiting for difficulties to emerge creates the dyslexia paradox. Children who need support before the end of KS1 are often not identified in time, even though the most effective window for intervention is in Reception and Year 1. The paradox exists because the system tends to wait for children to face difficulties instead of preventing it. One in four children are currently leavning primary school unable to read and spell at minimum expected levels.
Our work responds directly to this problem. The aim is to identify children who are not easily developing the speech sound and mapping skills needed for reading and spelling, and to show teaching assistants how to prevent difficulties from becoming entrenched. We catch them upstream. Unlike teachers, teaching assistants can more flexibly remove children for a few minutes and work on bi-directional word mapping. This also means they will be better equipped to support them on single word decoding and encoding when the child is reading and writing in the classroom setting.
What the Pilot Does
The pilot offers at risk children ten minutes a day with a TA. The focus is on strengthening phonemic awareness, phoneme articulation, oral blending, oral segmentation, and early speech to print mapping. This sits comfortably within the social model because the aim is to remove barriers early rather than apply labels. The TA learns how each child responds, notices how they process speech sounds, and becomes more aware of how phonemes and graphemes connect across the whole code, not only within the content taught explicitly in class.
TAs deliver the support using the technology and mapped books, and the class teacher does not take on any extra workload.
After the pilot the TA will be able to help with screening across classrooms and demonstrate Duck Hands to show satpin words with clear articulation. They can identify other children who may be at risk by asking what the word is while using Duck Hands to model the sounds, then asking the child to say the word or point to the matching visual prompt. They also ask the child to give the sounds in the word. Non speaking children can take part by pointing to the Monsters or typing the Phonemies. Our focus is to make word mapping easier for every child so that more working memory is freed up for comprehension.
This initially screening supports phonemic awareness and ensures that non speaking children can participate fully. It is a simple but highly effective and enjoyable way to check blending and segmenting skills with only six phonemes. These are usually the first six phonemes introduced in class.
How Whole Class Screening Works
In Australia teachers I support use a ten day Speech Sound Play plan before starting the Speech Sound Pics Approach or their other whole class phonics programme. Several schools in England used it this year, at the beginning of reception.
SpeechSoundPlay.com
They focus on building words with Duck Hands, Speech Sound Lines, and Numbers to segment words. Children place the Speech Sound Monsters on the lines. This is called the Monster Routine. During the pilot the TAs will learn this routine.
This means the teacher is screening for dyslexia risk through whole class activities that every child participates in. The teacher tracks when each child can complete a range of phonemic awareness tasks using the first six phonemes. As children are introduced to s a t p i n as pictures of speech sounds on day five, they are also checked when they can read and build satpin words. The visual prompts show only words that contain these six phonemes. This allows non speaking children to participate. They can show the sounds for the words by ordering the phonemic picture prompts or by using the Phonemies screen. They can show the blended word by pointing to the matching picture on the chart.
Teachers for the pilot have not introduced this and so they can use the video screener, which Avery is testingbelow, or use an even simpler version of the screener, which uses visual prompts only, although it is not as sensitive as the version used with non speaking children.
Also note that teachers can simply use their professional judgment and choose one to five children to take part without an initial screening session. Once the teaching assistant has supported children using this system, they will understand how we will screen future children.
Teacher says the phonemes:
p a n. The picture is this one. It is a pan. p /a /n pan.
Which picture would you choose if I said:
s /i/ p/ t/ a/ p/ a/ n/ t/
Teacher points to the visual prompt for tip.
Which are the sounds for tip? t/i/p
Teacher points to the visual prompt for nip.
What are the sounds for nip?
Teacher points to the visual prompt for sit.
What are the sounds for sit?
Teacher points to the visual prompt for tin
What are the sounds for tin?
The children who do not find this easy as they finish term 1 of reception are the ones who will benefit most from the 1:1 time with the TA.
We will acccept a decision for a teacher to use their professional judgment, or all children can complete the activity so that the process is fair and transparent, and so that parents can understand how children were chosen for the additional support. It is important to explain that this is only one part of learning to read. Phonemic awareness is not linked to intelligence, and many bright and capable children find these early speech sound tasks difficult at first. The purpose of the pilot is simply to support children who need additional guidance with their speech sound processing foundations so that they can learn to read and spell more easily, and to provide this support through a teaching assistant.
We are also developing a phonemic awareness screening app that can be used in term 1 of Reception, with or without graphemes. It tracks phonemic awareness, monitors how quickly children learn, and analyses the data. This pilot has more of a focus on what happens within the sessions with the TA, and we hope that pilot schools will then be involved in testing our tools. They will always be given free access, as a thank you for your involvement.
The Theoretical Rationale
We ensure children develop strong phonemic awareness so that speech to print mapping becomes easier. We treat graphemes as pictures of sounds, which supports children who find phonics difficult.
Our underlying theory aligns with Orthographic Mapping Theory (Ehri 2014) and the self teaching hypothesis (Share 1995). The Simple View of Reading assumes that decoding leads to comprehension. However, poor phonemic awareness makes decoding and especially encoding hard. This is why assessors regularly comment that many eleven year olds are still slowly sounding out words and not storing them in the orthographic lexicon. They have not reached the self teaching phase.
Reading is easier because there are many contextual clues. Spelling is far more demanding. The Phonemies show the code and support early orthographic learning.
Preventing the Dyslexia Paradox
The dyslexia paradox arises because children do not receive the personalised, specialist support early enough. There is no time in the whole class setting. Speedie Readies: Show the Code ensures that Reception pupils who are struggling with early speech sound skills do not wait until the Phonics Screener Check for help. The PSC does not isolate phonemic awareness so as an early dyslexia risk check it is not fit for purpose, and too late to prevent difficilties as they have already had two yaers of instruction. The support them is intervention.
The children who struggle to blend and segment words with s a t p i n, and we are not checking grapheme recognition or formation, receive a simple daily session with a TA that strengthens the foundations required for learning to read and spell. The aim is to prevent difficulties rather than respond after they have become entrenched. The reality is that when the teacher sees the impact in the whole class phonics lessons, because the children will be more engaged and will learn to map words more easily, the TA will probably be asked to do this with more children. Our hope is that next year they start with the ten day Speech Sound Play plan before beginning their phonics programme. Speedie Readies with the TA can start even earlier. It is important to stress that we are not asking for anything to be changed in class, and the children attend whole class phonics lessons as usual.
The TA will undertake two activities, starting with the Monster Spelling Piano app in week 1, and nothing else that week. They will have received the resources before the end of term and will be able to use the tech at home if they have a tablet. With their own private page, they will keep a diary and communicate with us to share their observations of the children. We will ask specific questions and guide them throughout the term. If they wish, we can hold a mid term Teams meeting either individually or with other TAs in the MAT. The pilot is being run to see how we can make this as easy as possible to implement, with the greatest impact.
Although we will know the GPCs the children are recognising and blending as they work through the Spelling Piano app, which HFWs they can read, and which One, Two, Three and Away! book they are reading, the main data we want is qualitative. We want to understand the perceived impact on the children from the perspective of the TA and also their teacher. We will send a questionnaire mid term and at the end, and they may be happy to chat with us, although we are very aware of how time poor teachers are.
A goal of the pilot is for the TAs to become attuned to the children’s responses during the two activities (seen here and here) to start listening, rather than trying to teach. The activities do the teaching. This less teaching, more learning approach enables them to begin to recognise what may be blocking the self teaching process. Much of our work centres on facilitating self teaching because most reading is acquired through implicit learning. The one in four children who are not reading with confidence by age eleven are typically not storing words efficiently in the orthographic lexicon, where speech sounds, spellings, and meanings become bonded.
If you have any questions please do not heistate to contact me,
Thank you for your interest in upstream screening and in the prevention of the intervention.
Emma Hartnell-Baker
How Speedie Readies Prevents the Dyslexia Paradox
Word Mapping is Easier When We Show the Code!
The TA will be able to offer personalised phonics with each child, for example exploring word mapping in relation to their own accent, or exploring how others say words. A teacher can't do this on a one to one basis with more than twenty five children, even if they have had training and understand, for example, the problem with ideas such as a vowel being “r-controlled”. The vowel sound doesn't change, there’s simply an extra sound added. So you can’t keep the same grapheme markers because you’re mapping two sounds, not a single altered phoneme. This is far easier for little ones to understand. If we use different sounds, the Phonemies change. Sometimes the graphemes change too. It aligns more easily with the underpinning theory behind the teaching of letters and sounds through phonics too.
Mapping words with an accent can be a brilliant way to raise awareness of our differences, and be proactive about inclusion. When teachers are told to teach phonics as if everyone speaks English in exactly the same way, we miss opportunities to talk about speech as something deeply personal. As this is such an under-explored element of teaching phonics, we have a blog dedicated to Phonics With An Accent.
The Dual Route to Word Mapping Mastery®
