Why Word Mapping Tools Are a Game-Changer for Phonics Teachers and the 1 in 4 Children Who Struggle to Map Words

Even as skilled readers, most adults - including those trained in phonics - struggle to break words into their individual sounds and map those spellings to the correct sounds. This process, known as phoneme–grapheme mapping, is at the heart of reading and spelling. Yet it remains invisible, inconsistent, and confusing for many people, including teachers. I give teachers words to map, and ask them which letters would be assigned to the sounds. How would you map 'giraffe'? Do you have a strategy?

How would you map the word 'giraffe'? The graphemes are usually easier.

It's not just about knowing the alphabet or being able to read fluently. Word mapping is a separate skill that requires the ability to hear, isolate and represent each sound in a word accurately. This is much harder than it seems. In fact, even experienced educators often find it difficult to confidently say how many phonemes are in a word or which graphemes represent them, especially when the word includes code that was not taught in their phonics programme.

That is where our technology steps in.

MyWordz® with MySpeekie® makes this invisible process visible. The tool maps the speech sounds and spellings in any English word using the Universal Code. It shows the phonemes and graphemes side by side, allowing adults and children alike to understand how a word is structured. No guessing. No memorising. No confusing rules.

This means children can blend and spell words using the actual speech sounds, rather than relying on memory or making incorrect guesses. The technology is designed to reduce the set for variation, which refers to the need for learners to try out multiple pronunciations of graphemes or guess based on context. With clear, precise mapping, every learner gets a consistent representation of the word, making blending and spelling much more straightforward.

The Word Mapping Tool does the hard part for you. It maps every word accurately, every time. This is Word Mapping Mastery made accessible for all brains.

The Clickable Library is coming soon, offering mapped texts that children can explore independently. Every word, every sound, every grapheme - clearly shown and easy to understand at the click of a button.

Whether you are a teacher, a parent, or a learner yourself, this technology changes what is possible in reading and spelling. And this is only the beginning.

Teachers at a Speech Sound Pics (SSP) Approach training session in Queensland, Australia. To teach phonics effectively, we spend a lot of time helping teachers develop strategies to map words in the moment during reading and spelling activities. The Word Mapping Tool, MyWordz® with MySpeekie®, now does that for them.