Learning to Read using the SSP Approach. A ‘Brain Based’ Skills Acquisition Process from Miss Emma,

The Reading Whisperer.

Information for Parents.

Think of learning to read using SSP as a 'skills acquisition' process that will allow ALL learners to develop reading brains quickly and easily. It also wires ‘spelling brains’ at the same time. When you

use this process fluency and comprehension actually develop naturally. Guided reading becomes an activity within which text is used that the children can already code, and they pick it apart.

Only 6 sound pics (s,a,t,p,i,n) used, but higher order thinking already a focus.

No more 'whole language' guided reading which asks that children to look at pictures, guess, miss out words they can't code...these

strategies slow down the learning to read stage. Binned in the UK around 10 years ago.

Use the SSP Skills Acquisition Process and the 'average' in term 4 when the mandatory benchmarking of ‘whole language skills’ is

underway will mean at least an average PM 15 in Prep, PM 30 by end of Year 1, if your school is still having to use ‘PM

Benchmarking’ as an assessment tool. All are authentically reading, and choosing what they want to read for pleasure before Year 2 when you use evidence based strategies. PM readers/ Levelled Literacy do not fit as 10 - 33% of every class

will never learn to read in that way. (see research relating to the reading brain)

It is vital that home readers reinforce their 'code mapping/ phonics' learning at school. The SA education dept is perhaps the leading

state with regards to evidence based advice, but many schools are still not 'getting' what they are saying. See image below. No

phonics without phonemic awareness (ie teaching a letter sound a day/ 3 per week from day 1 of Prep along with ‘sight words’) no letter names without coding skills, and no readers that do not

reinforce letter sound mapping with speech sounds. This counts out most phonics programs actually being used in SA.

Without going too far into neuroscience, the thing that separates children who find learning to read and spell difficult or easy relates not to intelligence, socio economic area etc but in ‘white area’ in the brain. Regardless of background, children with lower general

verbal ability and those who have difficulty with phonetic

processing seem to struggle. So what underlies those differences? How do we learn to translate abstract symbols into

meaningful sounds in the first place, and why are some children better at it

than others?

Only one thing consistently predicts how well a child learns to

read. That is the growth of white matter in one specific area of the brain, the left temporoparietal region. The amount of white matter that a child arrives with in kindergarten doesn’t make a difference,

but the change in volume does.

What is white matter? You can think of it as a sort of neural highway in the brain—roads that connect the various parts of the cortex and the brain surface. Information, in the form of electrical signals, runs across the white matter, allowing for communication between the different parts of the brain: you see something, you

give it meaning, you interpret that meaning. The left temporoparietal region is central in phonological processing,

speech, and reading. This is where we do so much work in Phase 1 and Phase 2.

My work (think of Phase 1 especially) is when we proactively re-wire the pathways for children and ENSURE that oral language and phonemic awareness skills develop, which will increase the

white matter and wire the brain READY to learn to read and spell. We then reinforce this in Phase 2. It is why no child is left behind. We are working with THEIR brains and not trying to teach them something the curriculum dictates, when their brains are not yet

wired for it ! Further work in this area shows that brain scanned as ‘dyslexic’ later scan as ‘normal’ within 4 to 6 weeks by doing the same

activities we cover in Phase 1 and 2 ie receptive language, memory, attention, processing and sequencing.

eg See work by Temple et All as early as 2000 ! It is not new. It is just not being implemented (yet) as standard practice across

Australia. Until SSP this has also not been inexpensive, accessible and fun to follow for teachers and students.

You can see the gap in research / practice by looking at choice of

‘readers’ for example as directed by education departments

This image shows a PM Level 1 (which would be in our Advanced Code - regardless of number of words, the code in those words is

too advanced for any other level)

All I have done is change the sound pics from letters to symbols.

You can see why children need to know what those symbols represent, to actually work out the word- can you work out the 3rd

one when picture clue removed?

What happens, when there is a picture and the code is too advanced, is that that child no longer really focuses on the text

anyway - they guess from previous, and use the image.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3b2nRYSAY8

Each sentence consists of 3 ‘sight words’ and one word that is made up of Blue Level code- and yet this is in a PM Level 1 reader

I saw the other day. That would go into our SSP Blue level reader box. Those kids are

almost ready to graduate to chapter books

That is not reading, and leaves at least 8 in every class struggling to EVER learn to read, and also puts them off wanting to learn to read (and spell). You can turn a child off reading for life by using PM readers and other whole language based (also called 'levelled literacy') readers in Prep as their brains are not wired to crack the code in those readers. So if these come home use them for paired decoding (you are the one following the sounds, they say the word as they point) and choose a reader they can code themselves from

www.sspreaders.com

Just remember, PM/ Levelled Readers have probably been sent home regardless of what the teacher understands. A very tricky

situation for SSP teachers.

Even our high frequency words are coded.

Pay careful attention to the skills acquisition process for the brain (see brain- eyes- information processing on left)

Apply the process of building on skills to reinforce and consolidate learning to reading, in the same way you would naturally do when

teaching a child to swim, play golf, bake a cake!

While going through the four code levels (SSP Green - Purple- Yellow- Blue) and learning 90 of the 200 sound pics that represent the 42+ speech sounds in our oral language home readers should

reinforce the sound pics they are focusing on in class. But BEFORE they can go through the four Code Levels brains

MUST be wired for phonemic awareness. This is auditory and does not involve letters.

When they are ready, they learn the code in a systematic and sequential manner. So a ‘Purple Level’ reader only has these…

Why? The brain needs to Code Map the speech sounds they hear in the word (phonemic awareness) with their ‘pics’ in an organised,

scaffolded way.

Example Words using Purple Level Sound Pics are shown below. They can ‘code map’ all words by listening for the speech sounds and ordering the visual representations of those speech sounds –

blending the sounds and sound pics into a whole word.

Spot the Duck Level Words (4) and weird ones ! (de ? woooheeee?)

So if looking at the first 24 or so (Green and Purple levels) they need to be able to read books with JUST those sound pics ie a

Purple Level reader. ONLY the 24 sound pics and a few Duck Level words (also coded) will be in there. There are 7 Duck Levels

covering 400 high frequency words. So in the Purple Level reader these words will be shown. See video example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1roBpDzT8Q The books ONLY using these, and a few duck level words (which

they know are in there before they start)

www.sspreaders.com has hundreds of free 'decodable' books. It is vital that they only see sound pics they know in the early stages, to develop fluency and comprehension, and so the brain doesn't have to keep stopping and starting because it doesn't know the sound

pics. Start fund raising if your school has no budget for decodable readers.

If your school is sending home readers with code the children do not know (and you must know their code level) then do 'paired decoding' with them, telling them that YOU will need to do the

'follow the sounds' part and they 'say the word' as the code is Blue Level (the hardest)

Use a skills acquisition process when teaching your child to read.

They need to identify the speech sounds in the words, and be able to map these with their representation on paper for reading,

writing and spelling!

SSP Green- 6 speech sounds are the focus with an initial set of sound pics as examples of representations for those speech sounds.

s a t p i n

(all representations will be discovered during the acquisition process

in Prep and reinforced in Year 1)

It is vital that they can code every word used to reinforce the sound pic. So no ‘s’ for snake or ‘a’ for apple !

They don’t explicitly look at split vowel digraphs (a-e in snake) until SSP Blue (but in reality they investigate them within weeks of Prep)

So look at the word linked with the sound pic cards. All made up

of s,a,t,p,i,n.

The Green Level Rap.

When they can do this in 14 seconds or less they are generally ready to move up to Purple. Last line has 3 duck level words (has / of/ his ) and 2 purple level sound pics (l/o in

the word ‘lots’)

If the readers at your school do not allow for this- eg if being sent PM readers, then make sure your child knows they could not

possibly 'read' it themselves, as they have not yet learnt the code,

as you would if sent home advanced algebra in Prep. You would tell them they couldn’t possibly work it out, and so there is nothing wrong with them for being unable to crack the solution. The maths

is too advanced. PM reader code?.. too advanced.

You will find that you can put PM readers in the Blue level box- so they can start reading them independently when they get to that

level. This is when they can be tested using whole language testing eg PM Benchmarking. Not until.

Would we test Prep children on advanced algebra when they aren't at that level yet, just because district office asks us to? If your

child’s teacher HAS to (most have no choice about things like this)

then at least understand that this is ridiculous until the kids have the skills to code those books. And if they can't, they can't

comprehend them authentically.

Always think… take away the pictures and can they code it on their own? If not, change the readers.

Miss Emma