This was a letter to a parent at a school now using SSP (The Speech Sound Pics Approach) and who wanted to learn more about how to help at home. www.sspreaders.com / www.myspeedyssp.com

1. Dear XXX- what you really need to do is to ask your child how it all works. It’s the quickest and
easiest way for children to not only learn to read and spell but to understand it all- and usually much
quicker than for parents. So ask them to tell you how to spell words- the system etc
You definitely need to order a USB with lessons on it as you can then see how fast you code as
well! How old is your child? Also get a Spelling Cloud keyring and Pocket Rocket Readers. The USB
has all 440 sight words/ high frequency words- coded. Coded means linking speech sounds with
sound pics, so the brain actually understands them and isnt memorising. They need to be able to use
duck Hands, Lines and Numbers to spell these words as well- the splits are shown in the pdf.

5. Play Speech Sound Detective as often as you can – with anything. You tell them the word, and they
work out the splits.
Use the keyring – here you can see a cloud for one speech sound- as I say ‘laugh’ in the way that
rhymes with ‘gaff’ I have ‘au’ in mine, as shown here. The clouds are a reference point- you dont
teach them- you discover them. They offer choices when spelling- so the child can quickly see what
‘looks right’ The more words they see, the more their brains ‘click’ in this regard, and ‘see’ what
looks right more easily.

8. While doing so much discovering and talking their knowledge increases naturally. For example on
Friday there was ‘rain’ so I ask children ‘is there another meaning? Is it spelt the same (reign) When
looking for the word ‘nutrition’ on a cereal packed, and working out the splits – n/u/t/r/i/ci/a/n –
they google it for the meaning.
However your school probably has a vocab program or uses Pop Corn words etc – Ill find out as
well.

9. This shows how the brain needs to ‘see’ words- only one of these is split incorrectly- can you or your
child spot it?
Download the free SSP Spelling Piano app and you will find out how words split according to speech
as well- the app follow the order of teaching the code.

10. This is a table top resource on the USB showing the sound pics, and first few Duck Levels- the rest
are on the back.

11. You dont need a list of spelling words- they learn to spell ANY words built using the code they are
learning (and the sight words) – by Blue (with the clouds as well) they can spell any word in the
English language by using the system- there is no memorising of sight words (Look Cover Say) as this
doesnt work- its not how the brain works for most.
If you go into a class of Year 2 students who have used this for 2 terms now you will all but two
working at the level of a Year 4 student at the same school, as those aren’t yet using SSP, and that all
are reading chapter books and can spell anything.
This shows progress in one term. The piece she is reading for her Probe Assessment is something she
is reading for the first time.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU8Jr-79_JM
You can see the year 2s doing some Speedy Ssp here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-
qQ5rU1d-0
And poster work here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gblCFI7Wk7k
Preps after 3 weeks of SSP - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fKN4zaENVU
This gives an overview of everything. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjEljTorwTE
Miss Emma