The Reading Whisperer shares some ideas for primary school teachers and learning support staff regarding older students who are struggling with reading and spelling.

1. Suggestions for older
students struggling
with reading and
spelling.

3. Although we show children the most commonly used
sound pics, to represent the speech sounds, children
need to know that this is often only one of them.
For example that ‘f’ is just the first speech sound pic we
are learning, for the speech sound ‘ffff’.
For most speech sounds there are more than one
sound pic so it’s important that children understand
this, and are exposed to them all from Prep.
Jolly Phonics
RWI

4. Many children aren’t exposed to the whole code, and ‘phonics’ only taken so
far within P-2. Many teachers in year 3 and up don’t include phonemic
awareness and phonics activities within their planning, for a number of
reasons (eg a National Curriculum they have to follow that doesn’t include
space for this!) however this means children have to learn words by memory
rather than working them out. They are unable to really participate in the
wider curriculum as they still haven’t mastered the alphabetic code. Spelling
lists don’t help children learn how to spell words, other than by memory-
often only short term.
Many children don’t ‘see’ words as being made up of speech sound pics.
Their understanding of sound pics is also limited.
For example children might know that ‘s’ represents the ‘sss’ speech sound,
but be unaware that ‘c’ can represent it also (and that there are another 6 or
7!) They don’t have a system for working out new words- either decoding or
encoding – so it becomes a choice of memorising or guessing. Both of which
can lead to feelings of helplessness. They can’t develop the parts in their
brain needed, to actually figure it all out !

6. Within SSP we teach these sound pics
explicitly, in this systematic order,
however children also
discover the other variations.
The clouds really help with this!
Children could have their own
Speech Sound Pics album, to record
their discoveries.
Stick a cloud on each page, and start
listening for that sound, and finding
out which sound pics are used

7. After learning the sound pics in order they work out all sound pics not yet discovered.
That’s the WHOLE of the English code! All can be seen visually using the Speech Sound
Clouds and the Speech Sound Pics within them. Children can learn the 150 or so sound pics,
and know how to read and spell over 95% of the English language. Children working
smarter, not harder 

9. Incase you aren’t sure of them all, please
download all of the Speech Sound Clouds
There is a cloud for every speech sound in the
English language, each showing every speech
sound pic. It helps show children
HOW the code works!

10. Involve the children and allow them to
discover the code in meaningful ways.
There is a place for explicit phonics teaching, and
also a place for facilitating understanding, and bringing the code to life !

11. Older children need to
SEE the code and
how it represents our
spoken language
as well !

12. Children need to see that ‘spelling’ can be fun,
meaningful and so much EASIER to master !

14. Older students need to see the skills and
concepts that will be learning, and how
their learning will progress- leading to a
change in their brain!

15. Notes to those working with struggling older students
I would suggest starting a folder with older kids, that they get out when
they do extra work with you- and also to do at home. They need to know
that because we are teaching reading and spelling differently, they
haven’t had certain teaching before, so were going to get them caught up
- and the quicker they learn it all the quicker they will become confident!

16. What I would do with them is teach them to listen to a word, identify the speech
sounds, write the lines, and then work out the sound pics.
This is possibly the best way to re-train their brains to start understanding the
way the code works. The butterfly shows how the word was 'counted' and
shows how they would work out the last sound (by finding the cloud) - they try
ones, to see which looks right. If none do, then you write the word, and then
they compare- and then write it themselves a few times.
The 'train' shows how to count speech sounds- youll prob need to stop and
think a lot too!!

17. They can discover sound pics on every
day objects

19. Also start with a word, and use the
SSP Spelling Approach, using the
clouds to try different sound pics

20. Use readers that enable them to
practice these skills
• Eg Talisman,
which are
from the same
authors as
Dandelion Readers
but are more age
appropriate

21. The Reading Whisperer™ urges schools
to STOP USING PM READERS
They not only make the reading process more difficult for the
majority of children, but can severely hinder decoding
practice for the very children who need it most.
If you have them, don’t let children use them as readers until
they are at the blue level, or they will start thinking that
reading = memorising or guessing.
Use them for spelling practice – you read the words, the child
figures out the sound pics (which are usually above their
current level)
Readers are books the children can actually read, which
means that they can decode around 85% of the words. By the
time children reach the SSP Blue Level they will be able to
read ‘real’ books anyway.

22. These skills must be taught if missed in
Prep and Year 1

23. We want to assess children’s
knowledge and ideas, not just what
they can put on paper.
• Consider therefore using technology that
allows children to do this for subjects such as
science etc- and even within English, when the
focus is on creativity.
Don’t keep children back, with low
grades, because they haven’t been
taught to read and spell with confidence.