⭐ Speedie Readies is designed to find out what each child needs before they struggle, shows them the whole code, and helps them learn to read and spell in the easiest way possible. We are preventing the dyslexia paradox in Reception and KS1. Ask about CPD.
Speedie Readies: Ten Minutes a Day, with a TA in Reception Pilot Overview
Speedie Readies: Show the Code. The Dual Route to Word Mapping Mastery.
This will potentially be the most powerful aspect of our vision for the next five years because it is where we can make the greatest impact on England's SEN crisis. By training TAs to deliver daily Speedie Readies sessions, supported by technology that shows every sound and every spelling inside each word, we can ensure that children who have the cognitive capacity enter the self-teaching phase long before difficulties take hold. This is a proactive, scalable solution that strengthens speech to print and print to speech mapping for every learner, including those with SEN, SpLC or SLCN.
Word Mapping Mastery® for any age. Speedie Readies gives your TAs daily mapping sessions supported by technology that shows every sound and every spelling inside each word, with activities that help learners store words for instant recognition when reading and correct retrieval when spelling.
Ten Minutes a Day, With a TA in Reception ensures that every child with the cognitive capacity enters the self-teaching phase of orthographic mapping well before the end of Year 1. This means they are not only passing the PSC with ease but also reading with comprehension rather than only decoding, and are efficiently storing words in the brain word bank for correct retrieval when writing. They are also intrinsically motivated to read because of the book series, which brings everything together with a clear purpose for word mapping.
The bi-directional mapping of words, powered by the world’s first bi-directional word mapping engine that also functions as a one-screen AAC, strengthens both speech to print and print to speech mapping so every child can connect speech and print in their own accent regardless of whether they have SEN, SpLC or SLCN.
This is technology, tools and specialist support unlike anything else currently available.
Speedie Readies Wtih a TA Pilot Summary
Purpose
This Speedie Readies pilot is designed for the prevention of the phonics or dyslexia intervention that takes place after struggling 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, ie after phonics instruction.
This pilot provides early, meaningful support that strengthens the foundational skills needed for reading success, particularly phonemic awareness and phonological working memory, before reading failure occurs. Before they start to struggle connecting letters and sounds.
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 mapping speech and print.
It is an initial pilot of the Speedie Readies system designed to identify, through real-world use, what works well and what could be improved following feedback. The goal of the pilot is to focus on who delivers it. The Speedie Readies system can be used in any Reception class from Term 2 onwards, supporting children selected by the teacher for targeted word mapping practice. A dual-route is used. The Code is Shown. Issues that arise for each child, on their journey to word mapping mastery, are explored with the TA at the time they need it. This is simply not possible within the whole class setting.
Focus of the Pilot
The pilot explores how young children respond to short, daily sessions that make the speech-to-print code visible through speech sound mapping and technology-based encoding and decoding activities.
Phonemic awareness does not always develop naturally in the same way as speech and oral language, and often requires explicit teaching. Learners who have weak phonemic awareness skills will struggle to master phonics, and poor phonemic awareness is a well-established contributor to dyslexia (Furnes et al., 2019). Research shows that children with specific language impairment or a family history of dyslexia may require more frequent exposure and practice with phonemic awareness activities in order to reach the same level of skill as their peers.
The phonemic awareness skills of segmenting and blending are particularly critical. Phonemic awareness has the greatest impact on word reading when it is combined with instruction about the letters that represent phonemes. It is therefore important to provide opportunities for children to apply their letter knowledge alongside their blending and segmenting skills within reading and writing activities (Brady, 2020).
Two activities within the pilot are designed to meet these goals. Findings from the National Reading Panel report (2000) indicate that the effects of teaching phoneme awareness are twice as large in small-group instruction compared with whole-class teaching. Small-group or individual sessions therefore provide the most effective structure to ensure that all children gain mastery of what is being taught.
Each participating school identifies one to five children in Reception or Year 1 who may be at risk because of speech, language, or literacy challenges, or who would benefit from additional confidence-building support. Sessions are delivered by teaching assistants, supported remotely through daily contact, and are designed to complement existing phonics instruction rather than replace it. All will have participated in whole class phonics instruction for at least one term.
Data Collection
The data gathered will be primarily qualitative, focusing on the impact of early, structured, technology-assisted intervention on both children and staff.
We are collecting information on:
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Child response and engagement: whether children enjoy the activities, participate willingly, and gain confidence in speaking, reading, spelling, and letter formation.
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TA experience: whether teaching assistants feel confident, empowered, and supported in delivering the activities.
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Teacher observations: whether classroom teachers notice improvements in confidence, engagement, or classroom participation.
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Technology usage data:
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Progress through the Spelling Piano app, which is organised into four code levels representing around 100 grapheme–phoneme correspondences (GPCs), the same correspondences tested in the Phonics Screening Check (PSC).
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Use of the orthographically mapped books that accompany the MyWordz® app, including which book or books each child is working on each week.
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Patterns of improvement in reading and spelling high-frequency words.
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Tracking of GPC mastery, showing which correspondences children become confident with for both encoding (spelling) and decoding (reading).
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Why This Matters
By combining qualitative observation with app-based usage data, the pilot provides an early picture of how children attend to, process, and recall speech sounds. These skills depend on phonemic awareness and phonological working memory.
The Speedie Readies approach is grounded in the Dual Route to Word Mapping Mastery®, which reflects how children move toward orthographic mapping, the point at which words become stored for instant recognition. The dual route involves movement in both directions: from sound to print, supported by Phonemies® to make speech–sound values visible, and from print to sound, through systematic blending of graphemes.
These routes align with established models such as the Dual Route Cascaded model (Coltheart et al., 2001) and theories of orthographic mapping (Ehri, 2005) and self-teaching (Share, 1995). Synthetic phonics focuses mainly on the print-to-sound route, but not all children make the transition from taught decoding to self-teaching. The Speedie Readies pilot addresses this by making the full code visible from the outset, so that both routes are strengthened in parallel.
The aim is to determine whether teaching assistants can deliver effective, early literacy support that prevents the need for later, more intensive intervention. By enabling children to work bidirectionally between speech and print, they gain the tools needed to reach Word Mapping Mastery®, where decoding and encoding operate automatically and fluently.
A further aim is for children to feel confident enough in using the MyWordz® technology that they can apply it independently in the classroom. When unsure how to spell a word while writing, they can use the app to see the grapho-phonemic structure and understand how letters and sounds connect. The same tool can also be used to decode any unfamiliar word, allowing children to check both structure and pronunciation for themselves.
Through this process, Speedie Readies supports movement toward orthographic learning, fluency, and comprehension, reducing cognitive load and preventing the dyslexia paradox by ensuring all learners can access both pathways to literacy from the beginning.
How Speedie Readies Prevents the Dyslexia Paradox
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
The Dual Route to Word Mapping Mastery®
The Dual Route to Word Mapping Mastery®
This concept represents the journey children take toward orthographic mapping, the point at which words become stored for instant recognition. The dual route involves movement in both directions: from sound to print, supported by Phonemies® to make speech–sound values visible, and from print to sound, through systematic blending of graphemes. These routes align with established reading models that distinguish between sublexical (print-to-speech) and lexical (whole-word) processing, such as the Dual Route Cascaded model (Coltheart et al., 2001). Synthetic phonics provides a valuable kick-start to this process, focusing primarily on the sublexical route by teaching children to convert graphemes to phonemes. However, some learners do not make the leap from this taught decoding stage to self-teaching, where they begin to build and consolidate orthographic representations. Word Mapping Mastery® describes the end point of this progression, where both routes converge and the child can move seamlessly between sound and print.
Reaching Word Mapping Mastery® matters because it marks the point at which cognitive resources can be redirected from decoding individual words to comprehending text. According to orthographic mapping theory (Ehri, 2005) and the self-teaching hypothesis (Share, 1995), fluency develops when readers can rapidly and automatically recognise familiar words, allowing working memory to focus on meaning rather than form. When children are still devoting effort to single-word mapping, comprehension is constrained because cognitive load remains high. Achieving automaticity through stored orthographic representations enables fluent reading, which is vital for understanding connected text (Perfetti, 2007). It also matters that children experience mapping from speech to print as well as from print to speech. By approaching words through their spoken forms, they are exposed to a wider vocabulary and can link more of their existing oral lexicon to written forms. This bidirectional mapping increases lexical exposure, strengthens phonological, orthographic, and semantic connections, and ultimately deepens comprehension (Perfetti & Stafura, 2014).
While models such as those proposed by Coltheart, Ehri, and Share describe how skilled reading develops, they rely on children reaching self-teaching and orthographic mapping through experience. The Word Mapping Mastery® approach via Speedie Readies differs in that it does not wait for this to occur naturally. Instead, it makes the full code visible from the start, showing all grapheme–phoneme relationships across words. By making both directions of the mapping process explicit, it enables all learners, including those who struggle with speech, phonological awareness, or conventional phonics instruction, to access the self-teaching phase and achieve orthographic learning. We leave nothing to chance. We prevent the dyslexia paradox.
References
Coltheart, M., Rastle, K., Perry, C., Langdon, R., & Ziegler, J. (2001). DRC: A dual route cascaded model of visual word recognition and reading aloud. Psychological Review, 108(1), 204–256. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.108.1.204
Ehri, L. C. (2005). Learning to read words: Theory, findings, and issues. Scientific Studies of Reading, 9(2), 167–188. https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532799xssr0902_4
Perfetti, C. A. (2007). Reading ability: Lexical quality to comprehension. Scientific Studies of Reading, 11(4), 357–383. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888430701530730
Perfetti, C. A., & Stafura, J. (2014). Word knowledge in a theory of reading comprehension. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18(1), 22–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2013.827687
Share, D. L. (1995). Phonological recoding and self-teaching: Sine qua non of reading acquisition. Cognition, 55(2), 151–218. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(94)00645-2
Show the Code!
Children LOVE the books!
"When children see that we are genuinely interested in how the words around us are mapped for meaning, they understand the reason we teach phoneme to grapheme connections and they begin to see themselves as thinkers, readers, and communicators."
Miss Emma
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. 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®
