Even though the written words are there, these three- and five-year-old children are mapping the words England and language from speech to print when the code is shown because they contain unknown graphemes.

When we Show the Code, we give them the information about the grapho-phonemic structure of the word that THEY need in that moment. If a child already knew the sound value of each grapheme, they wouldn’t look at the Phonemies® (phonetic symbols for kids), because they would already know it.

The Show the Code approach, using MyWordz® technology funded by Innovate UK, gives children access to the phonics knowledge they aren’t taught during phonics lessons or within synthetic phonics programmes. Most children figure this out through implicit learning, but at least 1 in 5 in England isn’t doing so, as reflected in the KS2 SATs results. They haven’t transitioned into the self-teaching phase, in which they figure this out independently. They need to be able to do this by Year 2. Add word mapping technology to your class ipads and bridge this gap.