Trainertext Magic
So what is the unique difference to All Aboard Phonics?
The answer is our trainertext phonics approach to reading. It makes reading practice so much easier, which makes the whole process so much less stressful for the learner and anyone trying to help them
So, what’s the trainertext solution?
We teach the children a single image for each sound. We then place those images above the text. So now, the child can decode any word. As soon as the letters are a bit confusing, the images above are there to guide them through it.
The pictophone characters are the moose with a juice, the Oon on the moon, the vulture into culture, the lion with a tie on, the umbrella man with a suntan, the kangaroos reading the news and the ogre in a toga.
The key thing is how the changing sound of the letter O is given away by the three different pictophones above it.
Here is the version for older learners:
It only takes minutes to learn the phoneme-image relationship of each ‘pictophone’. Then those moments of frustration and failure are now turned into a mini triumphs. The impact on the child’s psychology is huge.
You can test it yourself with this bit of English written with Greek letters. The pictophones used are the heart, ear, intestine, zigzag, six, umbrella, moon, eight, nine, earth, tie, egg, key/six, unicorn, nine/gate, voiced three, ring, equals, apple, leg, four, bell:
The sentence says “Here is some trainertext using the Greek alphabet.”
Neat, isn’t it?
This allows each child to do the decoding of the words each day successfully. So their confidence begins to rise and their subconscious brain is mapping all the letter patterns. Soon they find themselves starting to flow through the text.
They are learning to read in the same way they learned to walk, talk and play with a ball. It is the way our brains are wired to learn.
It really is like magic.
If you are used to teaching the “rules” of phonics, this might all seem a little worrying and you may have doubts of whether it works. We have tested it directly with over 15,000 struggling readers and our normal outcome is 100% success.
In just a 2-3 weeks the learner is using the images less and less, as their subconscious maps all of the letter patterns.
Here is a video of a girl aged 7 who had previously struggled to read, despite years of instruction with a well respected synthetic phonics approach being used. You will see she her confidence is up and she is dealing with quite tricky words with confidence, after just a few sessions of trainertext.
The cards she is using have plain text on the front and trainertext on the back.
Spelling
The hidden extra is that you will find the spelling development follows naturally.
Committing spellings to visual memory is virtually a waste of time. In fact, it is worse than that because it encourages sight memorisation. But if you are reading in the right way, your spelling will improve naturally.
Our ability to spell is a subconscious skill. I don’t even know where the keys are on the keyboard and yet these words keep appearing on the screen! My subconscious has mapped all the spellings and teams up with my fingers to make them appear for me.