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Self-paced phonics

Reform 3

In a neurodiverse classroom, it’s understandable that programmes are designed for ease of instruction across 20+ children, but with something this important, we need to rethink one-size-fits-all, same-paced learning.

Self-Paced Learning


Children don’t all need the same amount of instruction, and they don’t all need it for the same length of time. However, teachers in England are under pressure, as they are expected to choose a programme that aligns with what the DfE deems best practice, as seen here. We take the position that aspects of this approach help explain why the very children these changes were intended to support, following the Rose Report, are still not being effectively reached, and that it has in fact been detrimental for large numbers of children who would have developed this knowledge through earlier reading, often engaging with books independently and for pleasure. We will examine the essential core criteria that published SSP programmes were required to meet, exploring both the criteria and the accompanying explanatory notes, and outlining what we believe has been overlooked.
 

SSP programme developers were also given a suggested grapheme–phoneme correspondence progression during the validation process.

This progression does not include a Phase 1. This may reflect a recognition that the original Letters and Sounds Phase 1 did not provide a sufficient focus on phonemic awareness and included elements not directly related to connecting speech sounds with print, such as syllable work or rhyming activities. It may also be that Phase 1 was not intended to be assessed.
 

However, this raises important questions about underlying assumptions. The validation process appears to rest on the idea that all children will develop sufficient phonemic awareness through phonics instruction once they start school, and that comprehension will follow from decoding, consistent with the Simple View of Reading (Hoover & Tunmer, 1986).
 

In reality, for many children, this is like expecting all children to begin swimming lessons in the deep end. Some may manage, but many are not ready, and do not understand what is being asked of them or why. When we begin with speech sounds, the phonemic awareness aspect of phonological awareness, and then show how these sounds connect to letters on paper, children are far more likely to understand the purpose of the task. It is like starting in the paddling pool.

Without this, children are asked to look at shapes and produce sounds that they do not typically hear or use in everyday speech. Phonemes are something we isolate and articulate specifically for reading and spelling. If we did not need to do that, phonemic awareness would not matter.


We need to ease children into this process. As shown in the Speech Sound Play Plan, developed by Emma Hartnell-Baker in Australia, children can begin connecting to graphemes within days, but those first days matter. They link what children already understand about spoken language with something that at least one in five children will find very difficult. The pace matters from the very beginning.


This entry point can still be whole class and highly engaging. Talking about names, articulating the sounds within them, and building words using speech sounds creates a shared starting point. It avoids asking children to immediately navigate an opaque writing system. It also makes clear why we are focusing on speech sounds and introduces visual supports such as Phonemies to represent them, helping children organise sounds on lines or in boxes that will soon show graphemes (the pictures of the speech sounds). 

We have videos that show how parents can begin the process at home before children start school. The Phonemies represent the speech sounds and are embedded within the graphemes, which we refer to as pictures of speech sounds. You may use something else. At risk children benefit from having a visual speech sounf symbol, but IPA phonetic symbols would not be appropriate.
 

We take the introduction to phonics very seriously. If it is not grounded in a clear schema, many children will not understand what phonics is or why they are being asked to learn it.

In Phase 1 you can do this without gaphemes. 

Mark Seidenberg has recently argued that literacy teaching has become too reliant on explicit instruction, including phonics (Seidenberg, 2023, 2024). His concern is not that phonics is unimportant, but that it is being used as though everything about reading must be directly taught, step by step, to every child, for extended periods of time.


He highlights that reading develops through both explicit and implicit learning. Explicit teaching helps children get started with the alphabetic code, but it cannot account for the vast number of words children go on to read and spell. That learning happens through experience with print (Seidenberg, 2024).


This is the point at which children begin to “crack the code” independently.


This aligns with David Share, who showed that children teach themselves new words through successful decoding (Share, 1995), and Linnea Ehri, who explained how words become stored through secure phoneme–grapheme connections (Ehri, 2005, 2014). In all three accounts, explicit teaching is necessary, but it is not sufficient. It is the starting point that enables self-teaching.


Systematic, synthetic phonics programmes introduce around 100 grapheme–phoneme correspondences within their programme content, and it can take up to two years for a class to cover them due to the way teaching is structured. Some children are then assessed in the Phonics Screening Check having only recently encountered some of these correspondences.


Children need to learn this core code at their own pace, in a way that allows them to recognise and blend it securely, but all need to do this in far less time than synthetic phonics programmes plan for. It needs to be self-paced but also delivereed in a way that ALL children understand.


When teaching is fixed, the focus shifts to keeping up rather than securing understanding. Some children move on before they are ready. Others are held within content they have already mastered. In both cases, the conditions needed for self-teaching are weakened.

Seidenberg describes the goal of early instruction as helping children reach the point where they can begin to figure words out for themselves. Once that point is reached, learning accelerates through reading, pattern recognition, and experience, not through continued whole-class instruction on the same content (Seidenberg, 2024). In Australia, supporting thousands of children, we have found that most are able to start self-teaching if given decodable levelled readers when they have mastered Phase 2 sets 1 - 5.     
 

Phonics is only the kick start to orthographic learning, and to connecting spoken and written English for meaning and for writing in ways that others will understand. For some this kick-start is easy to embrace, for others the teacher needs to understand what is blocking it eg poor phonemic awareness. This is why we advocate for dyslexia risk sreening on school entry (and ideally earlier, when children turn 3)
 

A self-paced model allows children to move through the core correspondences at the rate they need. It ensures that those who need more time can secure the foundations, while those who are ready can move forward into wider patterns, vocabulary, and reading.

In a neurodiverse classroom, this is essential. A one-size-fits-all, same-paced approach does not reflect how children learn.

Self-paced phonics keeps the benefits of explicit teaching while making space for what matters most: children learning for themselves (Share, 1995; Ehri, 2005, 2014; Seidenberg, 2024).

In Australia Emma Hartnell-Baker worked with thousands of teachers over a ten year period to figure out how to ensure that every child could move through this sequence at their own pace. Over 90% had secured these correspondences and could blend them into words, reading confidently within code-level texts before the end of Reception.

There are also over 400 high-frequency words. Over 90% of children could recognise these and spell them correctly in their writing before starting Year 1.  

We are not delivering this in schools in England, as this approach does not rigidly align with current DfE essential criteria. It relies on technology to facilitate self-paced learning, freeing teachers to observe, respond, and support rather than deliver the same content to the whole class. PSC assessment is continuous and embedded within learning, not separated from it, and included comprehension.

However, parents can use this at home, giving their child a strong foundation and making the Phonics Screening Check straightforward. PRE will also show you what to add to your existing programmes and support teachers to understand word mapping.

​Get in touch to find out how.

SSP Green Code Level s a t p i n

Technology is the only way to ensure that over 90% of children can work through the core alphabetic code at their own pace, recognising and blending GPCS securely before starting Year 1. Teachers also need to be confident in mapping all words. No words are tricky. Change is possible in England. Self-paced learning is an important reform.

This may look complex, but every child is working through over 100 grapheme–phoneme correspondences and more than 400 fully mapped high-frequency words at their own pace. This was made possible through the use of technology, initially developed by Emma using PowerPoints, with repeated chants and children writing words as they watch, helping to secure the connections. Phonics books were aligned with the four code levels.

Because each child knew exactly what they had secured and what they were working towards, intrinsic motivation remained high. Every brain was receiving the dopamine that comes from being challenged while still experiencing success. We share this here, even though we are not launching in England, to show that this is possible. The content does not need to change. The way it is delivered does.

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