“When I taught infants, only around two in every 20 - 25 children were not independently reading the main readers before they went into Year 1. This meant that all but two had reached the self-teaching phase, where reading volume and orthographic learning begin accelerating rapidly through independent reading. Dropping this incredible scheme, particularly for teachers who value play-based learning, was a mistake. Not only did almost all children learn to read easily, many became avid readers for life.
 

Phonics was taught, as shown in the handbook, but it was integrated naturally within meaningful reading and writing experiences rather than isolated from them.

What was missing? Those two children had weak phonemic awareness and needed the speech-to-print code to be made explicit. They needed the graphemes and phonemes mapped clearly in ways Sheila McCullagh did not yet fully understand at the time.

I understand that now. That is why I have adapted The Village With Three Corners to facilitate Word Mapping Mastery® for all learners.”

— Miss Emma
Emma Hartnell-Baker MEd SEN
The Neurodivergent Reading Whisperer®
“My AuDHD brain is a pattern-seeking prediction machine: I am a word nerd!”