Dyslexia Whisperers®: Free Dyslexia Screening for Children Before They Are Taught to Read and Spell. Where Differences are Strengths and Every Child Belongs
The Early Dyslexia Screening Centre Dorset. Free Dyslexia Risk Screening for 3-Year-Old Children, Before They Are Taught to Read and Spell
Speak to Emma Hartnell-Baker, The Neurodivergent Reading Whisperer®, an Expert in Preventing the Dyslexia Paradox.
I use the world’s only bidirectional word mapping system with mapped One, Two, Three and Away! stories to show parents and teachers how to screen upstream and prevent reading difficulties completely, so every child reads for pleasure before 7. The phoneme (speech sound) value is also shown, not just the graphemes.
No more ‘Wait to Fail’.
Membership options, including access to mapped The Village with Three Corners books, are available for parents, tutors, and teachers at the official Speedie Readies web site SpeedieReadies.com
Together we can prevent the dyslexia paradox.
Free Dyslexia Risk Screening for 3-Year-Old Children, Before They Are Taught to Read and Spell
Speak to Emma Hartnell-Baker, The Neurodivergent Reading Whisperer®, an Expert in Preventing the Dyslexia Paradox.
At the Early Dyslexia Screening Centre, we screen children from the age of three, before they begin learning how letters and sounds connect. In January, we are launching a pilot across schools in England, screening and preventing difficulties in Reception and Year 1 to avoid the dyslexia paradox. Each at-risk child (around one in five) receives ten minutes a day of one-to-one time with a teaching assistant, using technology and stories to reveal the orthographic code. Ask how you can get involved
We will not wait for children to fail. Intervention must happen before the age of seven. The first two years of formal schooling represent a critical period for reading development, as difficulties in phonological decoding and grapheme–phoneme mapping become increasingly resistant to remediation once inefficient reading strategies and neural specialisation for print have consolidated (Stanovich, 1986; Torgesen et al., 2001; Lyon et al., 2003; Ehri, 2005).
Why Screen Todders and Three-Year-Olds for Dyslexia Risk Factors?
Every child deserves the chance to read and spell with ease without losing their identity or the strengths often associated with being neurodivergent. Through early screening to identify learning needs and targeted teaching that matches how each child learns best, we are re-routing literacy learning difficulties before they start school. The Dyslexia Baby Project celebrates linguistic and neurodiversity and champions true acceptance of uniqueness and inclusion.
It starts with early dyslexia screening checks for two-year-olds: toddler dyslexia testing through speech sound play.
Prevention that starts upstream!
📍 Our aim is that no three-year-old identified as high risk for dyslexia ever goes on to receive a dyslexia diagnosis. A diagnosis requires ongoing difficulty with reading and spelling. We offer free screening at age three, and a KS1 Speedie Readies Intervention to prevent the Dyslexia Paradox.
🌱 We also offer free screening for children aged 5–7 who are finding reading and spelling difficult in KS1.
We get children to the self-teaching phase really quickly!
Speedie Readies: Prevention and Intervention that starts upstream.
Emma Hartnell-Baker has set up the not-for-profit My SLCN CIC (MYSLCN.com) for social good. The organisation is seeking mainstream and specialist schools across the UK to take part in a no-cost pilot of MyWordz®, an inclusive literacy tool that includes MySpeekie®, a one-screen AAC tool. It is designed to support children who struggle with, or who are at risk of difficulties with, reading, spelling or speech.
Schools can also request a trial of the NeuroReadies Learning Pathway, offered as a 10-week Speedie Readies intervention for children in KS1who are struggling with reading and spelling. This initiative is not an adaptation of synthetic phonics and will not affect any programmes currently used in class. Instead, it provides a visual way to show the orthographic mapping of words through a series of books from the One, Two, Three and Away! series.
Instead of just saying something, type it in speech sounds. The words will appear, bridging speech and print while also preparing the dyslexic brain for spelling.
You can also say or type a word to see the mapping, showing which letters go together and which sounds they represent.
There are many ways to see how very young children process language and to consider how we can best help them understand written English. To read and spell, they need to connect speech sounds to letters. This connection is the foundation of all language and literacy learning.
Even at a very young age, children can begin to isolate, blend, and segment sounds without thinking about letters, building the foundations they need to be ready.
Some children, like Claire, can show they are able to blend sounds by giving us the spoken word. We know Claire will not struggle to read and spell, regardless of how taught at school. But not all can, or choose to, speak. We must therefore learn how they process language in other ways.
Through play, we can help you understand your child’s entry points and how they are learning.
Highly Specialised Neurodiversity Training – £975 plus travel for a 3-hour in-house session
Delivered by the creator of the NeuroReadies® Learning Pathway, an expert in teaching neurodivergent children to read.
This training equips staff to implement the pathway so that teaching assistants can lead one-to-one sessions. It is suitable for non-speaking autistic children and is not an adaptation of synthetic phonics.
For multi-academy trusts or larger group bookings, please contact us for tailored rates. Play@MyWordz.com
The NeuroReadies® Learning Pathway embracing nonSENse! Book Speedie Readie Training with Miss Emma
Why Do We Use the Phonemies® Family of Speech Sound Monsters and Monster Mapped® Words and Books?
Because when children read, how do they feel?
That should matter to us a great deal!
Miss Emma
Children can work out any unfamiliar word because Monster Mapped® words show both the graphemes and their sound values. By making the mapping visible at the moment of first encounter, the child does not need to rely on partial decoding, contextual clues, guessing, or memorisation. For children with good phonemic awareness, just one or two mapped exposures can secure the word in the orthographic lexicon (Ehri, 2014; Share, 1995), as speech sounds, spelling, and meaning are bonded. This supports the orthographic mapping of that word and helps children enter the self-teaching process (Ehri, 2014; Share, 1995).
As more words are securely stored in the orthographic lexicon, recognising new words without visible mapping becomes increasingly automatic. Monster Mapped® words ensure that connecting letters and sounds is never left to chance or dependent on previous instruction. Children receive the full code precisely when they need it, so every learner can move forward with confidence. Most importantly, we must always ask: how do they feel when they read? For children with dyslexia, this explicit and immediate access to the full code prevents the instructional casualties created by synthetic phonics programmes and enables independent, fluent reading.
New to Monster Word Mapping®?
Watch the 10-day Speech Sound Play Plan to see how we introduce the Phonemies® to young children. If you are supporting an older child, it still helps to read through the plan because even within those first ten days children encounter all of the Phonemies, including those found in their own names. They are not limited to the Monsters linked to the first GPCs they will learn (s, a, t, p, i, n).
Many children in Years 1 and 2 who struggle with reading and spelling can begin by learning the Monster sounds, checking they know the Green and Purple Code Level GPCs and the first set of HFWs, using the Monster Spelling Piano app. They can then move straight to the Mapped One, Two, Three and Away! books. Ask your local library to stock the books, to read the regular version after reading the mapped version! The earlier children start this intervention, the easier it is to help them become confident readers.
References
Ehri, L. C. (2014). Orthographic mapping in the acquisition of sight word reading, spelling memory, and vocabulary learning. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18(1), 5–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2013.819356
Share, D. L. (1995). Phonological recoding and self-teaching: Sine qua non of reading acquisition. Cognition, 55(2), 151–218. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(94)00645-2
Preventing the Dyslexia Paradox
The window to prevent reading and spelling difficulties for children attending school is in Reception and Year 1.
Around 1 in 4 children are at risk when teachers rely solely on a one-size-fits-all whole class synthetic phonics programme to teach phonemic awareness and word mapping. These programmes focus predominantly on grapheme to phoneme mapping (print-to-speech) with only a limited subset of the full orthographic code, and much of the exploratory word mapping that happens with a broader set of materials (with many learning to recode, and use Set for Variability when words are in meaningful context) too many fail to reach the self-teaching phase quickly and easily enough. Most of what they need, to read, happens via implicit learning. They have to follow the pace of the programme.
The Speedie Readies system directly addresses phonemic awareness and phonological working memory while also focusing on speech-to-print phonics within meaningful stories. The code for all words of English can be shown. This phoneme to grapheme mapping enables children to reach the self-teaching phase and begin orthographic mapping far more easily, and early enough to also ensure that they experience reading for pleasure. If children are not intrinsically motivated to read by seven, it becomes much harder to engage them in choosing to read independently.
Start with the 10-Day Speech Sound Play Plan at the beginning of Reception. Visit SpeechSoundPics.com to get started.
Ideally, schools use the Speech Sound Pics (SSP) Approach, but regardless of which systematic phonics programme is in place, from Term 2, a teaching assistant can lead children through Speedie Readies on a 1:1 basis. The goal is to prevents the dyslexia paradox.
The Dyslexia Baby Project
Dyslexia Re-Routed
The Early Dyslexia Screening Centre identifies dyslexia risk in three-year-olds before they are taught to read with phonics, and is showing early years professionals how to do the same.
There is also a Speedie Readies pilot in schools, starting in January 2026, to screen for dyslexia risk and provide targeted intervention in Reception and Year 1.
We need to look upstream. If we had more support to prevent the dyslexia paradox, by not waiting until children fail with synthetic phonics before offering help, we could prevent any child from struggling to read and spell.
The current focus on what happens after children have been failed, for example by organisations such as the British Dyslexia Association and advocates like Jamie Oliver, is important, but it is time to stop letting it happen in the first place.
Screening before children even start school is our best chance to prevent one in four from being failed, and to ensure that every child experiences joy when reading. Miss Emma has been screening for risk before children are shown how to connect letters and sounds for over two decades. It is one of the best investments a parent or early years educator can make. It changes lives.
This is not just an issue for children at risk of dyslexia. The figures reported by library staff highlight much wider challenges across England: almost all staff (99%) see a decline in children’s enjoyment of reading, 98% report falling attainment, and large numbers raise concerns about children’s wellbeing, mental health, and communication skills. These findings show that the crisis in reading is affecting the whole population, not only those with specific learning differences, and that urgent, systemic responses are needed to support every child.
MyWordz® delivers Discovery Word Mapping for all words. Word Mapping Mastery® by The Reading Hut Ltd. Play-based Discovery Learning meets action, from birth…we find out how children learn BEFORE we start teaching them to read and spell. Before they start learning about letters and sounds with a phonic programme. They need Mapped Words®, explored with parents and teachers who are Dyslexia Whisperers!
Let's focus on understanding Dyslexic Brains. We can re-route difficulties.
Ask about Face to Face Early Dyslexia Screening in Dorset with Emma Hartnell-Baker, The Neurodivergent Reading Whisperer® Also offering online support.
By re-routing dyslexia, we are not taking away the strengths. We are removing the difficulties by embracing learning differences. Prevention is key. We take care of the roots, so barriers to learning never take hold. This is how we avoid the dyslexia paradox. Get involved with the Dyslexia Baby Project and let's celebrate linguistic and neurodiversity!
We facilitate early dyslexia screening - get involved with Toddler Dyslexia Screening - spread the word about the Speedie Readies!
Mapped Words: Making the Code Visible.
Word Mapping Mastery with the MyWordz with MySpeekie tech! IPA Phonemies Bridge Speech and Spelling for ALL Brains
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"Word Mapping Mastery: real orthographic knowledge, for neurodivergent minds, not just the GPCs a programme covers."
Emma Hartnell-Baker, The Neurodivergent Reading Whisperer®