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printResearch into brain activity has shown a bidirectional connection between visual and phonological areas of the brain. This means that children should be systematically taught how letters map to speech sounds and also the speech sounds to print. These skills support each other, creating a reciprocal relationship.
- Print-to-speech skills are those required for decoding. To read words, graphemes (letters and letter combinations) must be translated into speech sounds, then blended to produce spoken words in our vocabulary.
- Speech-to-print skills are those required for encoding. To write words, spoken words must be segmented into speech sounds, and these sounds must then be translated into graphemes.
Source of the definitions: Jennifer Buckingham (2020), Five from Five Blog.
Cognitive psychology research shows that having a deep knowledge of words in how we hear, say, read, and spell them facilitates strong mental graphemic representations of the words to be accessed automatically. PLD emphasises both ‘speech to print’ and ‘print to speech’ skills.
Instructional Print to Speech (Supporting Decoding)
Demonstrate sounding out either by syllables or phonemes, and then reading four words on each word list with the whole class.
- Step 1: Project the word list with the whole class.
- Step 2: Introduce the phonic concept by reading the sentence either underneath the phonic concept or at the top of the word list.
- Step 3: Choose four words to sound out and read together with the class.
- Step 4: Repeat steps 1 to 3 for the other two word lists.
Source: SSP Timesavers code SSPTS3
For example:
“This week we are learning a trigraph ‘igh’ is three letters representing one sound /igh/ as in light. In this word list, we will sound out in syllables. Let’s say the syllables and then read the first four words together.”
“twi-light–twilight”
“high-way–highway”
“light-ning–lightling”
“frigh-ten–frighten”
“Now let’s look at the next word list…”
Spelling is a key focus in these activities because it generally yields higher quality representations than reading alone. Moreover, pronouncing a sound while writing the grapheme facilitates the orthographic mapping process to occur.
Instructional Speech to Print (Supporting Encoding)
Demonstrate one word from each word list with the whole class.
- Step 1: Project the speech-to-print mapping template with the week’s word list to the whole class.
- Step 2: Say, “If you are in the Red Group, please get your lead pencil, a coloured pencil, and your worksheet out. We are going to do a word together.”
- Step 3: Model the SSP version of ‘Look, Cover, Say (the sounds, not just the word), Write, Check’ routine. Demonstrate how students will alternate colours for each sound or syllable. Complete each word twice if using the double time worksheet.
- Step 4: Repeat steps 1 to 3 for all three word lists.
- Step 5: Set a timer for 10 minutes. Students complete the rest of the task independently. Use this time to support your weakest students with the task.
For example:
“If you are in the Red Group, please get your lead pencil, a coloured pencil and a book to cover your words with. We are going to do your first word together.”
“Everyone, let’s first read the word in its syllables–twi-light–twilight”
“Now we cover the word– what was that word again, everyone? –That’s right its twilight”
“What was the first syllable?– twi. Let’s pick up our pencil and write twi– but what letter will I use to represent the sound /igh/ in the first syllable? –yes, it’s just the letter ‘i’ here.”
“What is the last syllable in twilight?–light. Let’s change to our colour pencil and write –light. But what letters will I use to represent the sound/igh/ in the last syllable? – Yes, it’s our new phonic concept ‘igh’.
“Now we uncover the word and give it a tick if it’s right. If not, we can go back and fix it.
“This is a double-time worksheet, so once we finish the word list, we will go back and cover both words when we do the word list again.”
“Let’s do one word from the next word list…”
Conclusion
Print-to-speech and speech-to-print activities are not exclusive to the PLD word lists. The key takeaway is that these complementary skills work together to help students build strong connections between the spoken and written English language.
References
