Structured Linguistic Phonics (SLP)

Structured Linguistic Phonics (SLP) is particularly beneficial for children with poor phonemic awareness because it starts with spoken words and their individual phonemes, helping children identify, distinguish, segment, blend and manipulate speech sounds. This speech-to-print approach strengthens phonemic awareness while developing an understanding of how phonemes map to graphemes in words, supporting both reading and spelling.
 

As with Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP), the core code of around 120 grapheme–phoneme correspondences (GPCs) is introduced in GPC groups, giving children the opportunity to consolidate their learning and practise blending in Reception using a limited set before more are added. Most systematic phonics programmes start with the phonemes /s/ /æ/ /t/ /p/ /ɪ/ /n/ and their corresponding graphemes ‹s› ‹a› ‹t› ‹p› ‹i› ‹n›.
 

The Upstream Team shows educators how to deliver SLP in a whole-class setting, meeting DfE expectations for content while giving children at risk of dyslexia greater opportunities to overcome the difficulties we know are markers of dyslexia. It also enables children to progress at their own pace, rather than at the pace of the group.

Those who can fly through phonics do so, moving on to authentic texts earlier, rather than becoming bored or losing interest in reading for pleasure because they're restricted to class- or group-paced, GPC-aligned 'decodable readers'.

We know of no-one else who has achieved this. However, SLP can also be used as an intervention for children with SEND.

On this page, we'll demonstrate the latter.