Our Pedagogy
Training is key to what we do. There is strong evidence of the impact of teacher knowledge on student learning (Coe, et al, 2014) and we know that teacher knowledge is key to the success of any programme.
Sounds-Write provides practitioners with a sound theoretical overview of the Science of Reading and the Science of Learning, a solid understanding of how the alphabet code is structured, and how to teach it.
A sound-to-print approach
Sounds-Write is a sound-to-print approach which means that it is based on and structured around the sounds of speech.
While humans have an instinct to acquire language, we do not have an instinct to acquire reading and writing. Like all secondary knowledge, writing systems need to be taught explicitly (Geary, 2005).
What does this mean?
As a species, communicating orally in our native language is what is known as biologically primary knowledge. Other types of biologically primary knowledge are learning our own ‘folk’ culture, being on the lookout for predators and prey, and recognising human faces. Children are primed to acquire their own language (or languages, in the case of multilingual children) naturally by being exposed to it in the environment; most children acquire it naturally without teaching.
On the other hand, writing systems belong to the category of biologically secondary knowledge, as do other inventions, such as mathematics, musical notation, and many scientific domains.
Our phonics curriculum
The Sounds-Write programme and approach is broadly based on the work of the late Diane McGuinness, Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of South Florida (McGuinness, 1997 and 2004). Sounds-Write provides a phonics curriculum. This means teaching explicitly the essential phonemic awareness skills, conceptual knowledge, and code knowledge needed for students to learn to read and spell. We don’t encourage guessing, looking at pictures, or using context to try and work out what a word is.
The power of explicit instruction
Sounds-Write relies on explicit instruction because we know that ‘explicit instruction is optimal when teaching novice to intermediate learners’ (Clark, Kirschner and Sweller, 2012).
The Sounds-Write approach
Sounds-Write is a highly structured, cumulative, multisensory programme, and we teach both reading and spelling in every single session.
A highly structured programme
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We teach from simple to complex across the programme, and also within the units and lessons, building up in small steps and following a logical sequence that ensures students can read and spell as many words as possible as soon as possible. It can be used in whole-class teaching and small-group intervention settings from the first year of school all the way through to the end of primary school and beyond. As literacy improves, the focus of Sounds-Write sessions moves from learning to read in the first years of schooling to consolidating spelling by the end of the primary years and thus enabling students to ‘read to learn’. Whether a teacher is teaching ‘mat’ to a four-year-old or ‘chlorophyll’ to an older student, the same approach and language are used to teach how to read and spell these words, and the same Teaching Through Errors strategies are used when students make mistakes. Sounds-Write can also be successfully used with secondary school students and with adults.
A cumulative programme
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Everything we teach builds on what has been taught previously, so we are constantly reviewing, and there are multiple opportunities to practise at every step. For this reason, teachers are able to progress through the scope and sequence at a good pace, using formative assessment to identify any content from previous units that needs revisiting alongside the new learning that’s being introduced. This approach is also integral to the Extended Code when we teach First Spellings and then More Spellings of some of the sounds. So for the sound /ae/, we first teach the spellings < a >, < ay >, < ai > and < ea > in single-syllable words, then return to those spellings in polysyllabic words, and then come back later to teach more spellings of the sound /ae/: < ei >, < eigh > and < ey >, again first in single-syllable words and then in polysyllabic words. This cumulative approach enables spaced practice.
A multisensory programme
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Students say the sounds, they hear the sounds, they identify, point to, and move the spellings of sounds (using manipulatives such as sound cards or sticky notes), they write the spellings of sounds… and all these senses interact to enhance the connection between sound and print. That is why, at Sounds-Write, we always insist that the students say the sounds as they read a word and say the sounds as they write a word.
We teach reading and spelling in every session
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The code is reversible, meaning that what you can read, you can spell, and what you can spell, you can read, and reading and spelling are taught in parallel. Many schools report seeing huge leaps in students’ ability and confidence in spelling almost as soon as they start implementing the programme.
The theory that underpins Sounds-Write
1. Drawing on the findings from Cognitive Load Theory
Sounds-Write draws on many years of research and practice. It draws heavily on cognitive science, in particular on Cognitive Load Theory (Sweller, 1998), and the instructional choices required to accommodate the limitations of working memory and to ensure that information is efficiently and effectively stored in and can be retrieved from long-term memory.
With young children entering school and learning for the first time, we need to take very small steps, limiting the amount of information that we are teaching and giving students lots of exposure and opportunities for practice to achieve a high level of success. Teachers learn how to make careful instructional choices to support students at any level.
2. Based on key principles from the Science of Learning
Sounds-Write is based on the science of learning. This means that spaced practice and retrieval are integral to the design of the programme. Spaced practice is practice that is spaced out over time to avoid forgetting. Retrieval is recalling information from long-term memory through quizzing or testing, for instance, which is effortful and leads to remembering better.
Interleaving, which means mixing the type of problems being practised rather than ‘mass’ practising one type of problem, is another aspect of the design of Sounds-Write. Our Planning Principles show staff how to mobilise these aspects of the science of learning to maximise learning in their classrooms.
Get started with Sounds-Write
Are you ready to transform your teaching and boost reading and writing outcomes for your students? We have plans to suit all schools and settings.
