Children differ enormously in how much explicit phonics instruction they need.
 

Some start figuring out how speech and print connect with little or no explicit phonics instruction. Others need more explicit instruction, more repetition, or a different way to understand how speech and print connect.

The focus is self-teaching from the outset.

As much explicit instruction as they need, and no more.

So when a child encounters a word they can’t yet read or spell, an important question is:

“What information does this child need, right now, to keep reading, writing and learning independently?”

In England, the answer should already be familiar, especially when mapping from print to speech.

It’s the alphabetic code.

But what happens when they don't know how to spell a word?

​

A recent discussion on LinkedIn raised a question that I think gets to the heart of how children learn to spell English words
.

The post focused on Latin-based words and the value of looking at word structure, morphology and etymology. In our discussion, the author of the post made it clear that he sees phonics as fundamental, but suggested that knowledge of word structure can provide a back-up strategy alongside phonics when spelling words where the sounds don’t completely determine the spelling.
 

His example was /shun/. Hearing /shun/ in words such as action or dispersion, he pointed out, doesn’t tell us which spelling to choose. His argument is that phonics and knowledge of word structure complement each other, and that some spellings become easier when children break words into meaningful parts.

But this raises a question for me. Will that actually work as a back-up strategy if the child doesn’t already know the spelling of the word?

When I train teachers, I demonstrate the problem using a real word that I know most of them won’t have seen or heard before. I say the word and ask them to spell it. These are skilled adult readers and spellers, yet they cannot know which spelling to use if that word isn’t already stored in their orthographic lexicon. They can analyse the phonemes and draw on everything they know about English spelling, morphology and word structure, but ultimately they can only generate plausible possibilities.

Take his /shun/ example - if we deviate from phoneme-grapheme mapping for a moment (I would map faction as <f> <r> <a> <c> <ti> <o> <n> in line with DfE guidelines) a child might have seen all of these possibilities:
 

ssion – depression
tion – fraction
sion – tension
cian – musician
shion – cushion

​​

But how would they know which one to choose for a word they have never encountered?
 

That distinction between plausible spelling and conventional spelling is important. A learner may produce a perfectly plausible representation of the phonemes and still not spell the word correctly. The information needed to distinguish between <ssion>, <tion>, <sion>, <cian> and <shion> simply isn’t contained in the sounds used to say the word.

Morphology and etymology are valuable, and of course there are words where morphological knowledge helps constrain the possibilities. Understanding relationships between words can also make spellings more meaningful and memorable. But that is different from saying that morphology provides a reliable way of discovering the conventional spelling of an unfamiliar spoken word. Sometimes it can help; sometimes there is still information the learner simply doesn’t have.
 

So why not give them that information?

If the missing information is the mapping, show the mapping

This is the question that led me to develop MyWordz® word-mapping technology, funded by Innovate UK, to Show the Code in the moment. 

If a child wants to spell a word and doesn’t know which graphemes represent its phonemes, the technology can show the actual mapping instantly. Rather than asking the child to choose between several plausible alternatives without access to the answer, it shows which graphemes are used and their sound values in that particular word.
 

It works bidirectionally because reading and spelling present different problems. When reading, the word is already visible. A child can use partial decoding and, if the word is in their oral vocabulary, Set for Variability gives them a chance of resolving a pronunciation that doesn’t initially produce the word they know. When spelling, however, the conventional orthography is not visible. A learner can segment the spoken word beautifully and still have absolutely no way of knowing (if it is unfamiliar) which of several plausible graphemes has been conventionally chosen.

This is why I think instant access to the mapping is so useful. It doesn’t replace morphology, etymology or discussion about words. Those can all happen once the word is available to explore. It removes the unnecessary guessing about something the learner could not necessarily have worked out in the first place.

Once the mapping is visible, a 60-second routine can be used to help the learner bond and store speech (phonemes), spelling (graphemes) and meaning. The point isn’t merely to get the spelling right on that occasion. It is to support the orthographic learning that means the learner is more likely to know it next time.

The goal is self-teaching
 

This is the part that matters most to me. Children differ enormously in the amount of explicit phonics instruction they need. Some begin figuring out the relationships between speech and print with little or no explicit phonics instruction, while others need much more support. Self-teaching isn’t something that has to wait until a child has completed a phonics sequence; it is something to facilitate from the outset.

That changes how I think about unfamiliar words. If a child needs information that they don’t yet have, why make continued reading or writing dependent on an adult explaining it, a programme eventually teaching it, or the child guessing correctly?

Give them access to the information and let them use it.
 

That is very different from technology doing the learning for the child. MyWordz® doesn’t read or spell the word for them. It gives them access to the code so that they can see how speech and print connect, use that information, store it and increasingly teach themselves.

As much explicit instruction as they need, and no more.

There’s an adult problem too
 

There is another reason this discussion interests me. Moats (2020) highlights gaps in teachers’ knowledge of phonology and the structure of written language, including knowledge needed to analyse the relationships between speech and print. My current doctoral research is exploring this issue in the English context, where teachers are expected by the Department for Education to understand how phonemes and graphemes map for reading and spelling and to draw attention to new correspondences as they arise.
 

That expectation is considerable when English contains far more complexity than the correspondences explicitly taught within a phonics programme. If an adult isn’t certain how a word maps, how can they confidently show that mapping to a child?

Interestingly, teachers often learn as much as their students when the code is shown.

This is why I don’t see word mapping technology as a replacement for teacher knowledge or explicit instruction. It can give both adults and children immediate access to information that neither should be expected to hold completely in memory.

And it brings me back to the /shun/ example.
 

If a child hears /shun/, there are multiple plausible spellings. Phonics can help them identify the phonemes and generate possible graphemes. They may see all choices on the wall, as demonstrated below. Morphology and etymology can add useful information and deepen their understanding of the word. But if they still cannot know whether this particular word contains ssion, tion, sion, cian, shion, or another representation, why make them guess?

Show them.

Then explore the morphology. Talk about the etymology. Discuss the meaning. Help them bond the phonemes and graphemes so that the word can become part of their orthographic knowledge.

And let them get on with teaching themselves.
 

If they don’t know it, Show the Code

Emma Hartnell-Baker MEd SEN