Reading and Spelling Skills for Children
Our speech pathology services
Why speech therapists can help your child with reading and spelling
Learning to read and write starts long before your child starts school. The building blocks of literacy start with sound awareness, which is why speech therapists can play a key role with helping children who are having trouble learning to read and spell.
Our preschool screening can often identify early on children who are at risk for reading and spelling difficulties. If your child is in primary school or even high school, it’s never too late to make a difference and reduce the ‘chore’.
Are you worried that your child is falling through the cracks? Or concerned that your child lacks confidence in spelling? Our proven approach can help boost your child’s reading and spelling skills.
As anyone who’s set foot in a classroom in the early years knows, there’s a huge range of abilities between kids of the same age. So it can be hard to know if your child needs support or if they will catch up in their own time. But some warning signs to watch for include:
- Reluctance to read or write
- Struggling to remember letters, sounds and words
- Reading is effortful
- Regularly guessing words when reading or spelling
- Difficulty sounding out unfamiliar words when reading or spelling
- Trouble distinguishing between similar sounding words
- Difficulty saying longer words such as “astronomer” and “quadrilateral.”
Our therapy approach
North Shore Speech Therapy is a leader in the assessment and treatment of literacy difficulties, including Dyslexia and Specific Learning Disorder. When you come to us, we’ll start with a diagnostic literacy assessment that gives you an easy-to-understand overview of your child’s strengths and areas where additional support is needed.
Our therapists can use a holistic approach to diagnose Dyslexia or determine if another issue is impacting your child’s reading.
We use our evidence-based intervention program, Speak and Spell, developed by our owner, Lauren Reinhardt. This is a synthetic phonics-based program uses the most recent research on phonological (sound) awareness and letter-sound development. It includes targeted support for skills beyond the foundations for reading and spelling, including syllable types, spelling rules and morphographs.
Our emphasis on treating literacy difficulties sets North Shore Speech Therapy apart from other practices. All therapists receive comprehensive training with regular sessions on the latest research to boost clinical skills.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Speech pathologists understand the full relationship between sounds, letters, words, parts of words, sentence structure and grammar, and how these systems work together to support reading and spelling.
When a child struggles with reading or spelling, there is usually an underlying language-based reason. This might include difficulty with phonemic awareness, weaknesses in phonological processing, difficulty remembering sound–letter links, or challenges understanding how words and sentences are structured. A speech pathologist works out why reading and spelling are difficult and targets the skills underneath.
This means we can help children to:
• develop strong phonemic awareness skills (identify and manipulate sounds in words)
• strengthen phonological processing (storage and retrieval of sounds) so reading becomes easier and more automatic
• understand spelling patterns rather than memorising individual words
• build vocabulary so reading makes sense, not just sounds right
• improve comprehension so reading is meaningful and less exhausting
If reading or spelling feels hard, slow or effortful for your child, a speech pathologist can help. We are trained to identify the underlying cause and treat it properly, rather than only working on the surface skills.
Dyslexia is a language-based learning difficulty that primarily affects reading, spelling, and writing. It is characterised by difficulties with phonological processing, the ability to identify, manipulate and hold onto the sounds in language. Signs include difficulty learning letter sounds, slow or inaccurate reading, persistent spelling errors, and trouble sounding out unfamiliar words. Speech pathologists can assess for dyslexia and provide evidence-based interventions that target the phonological and language skills underlying reading and spelling. Many children with dyslexia respond well to structured, multisensory literacy programs delivered by a specialist speech pathologist.
The short answer is earlier than most people realise.
As speech pathologists, we can often identify children who will need specialised reading intervention well before formal reading instruction begins. Reading difficulties do not suddenly appear in school. They are rooted in early language, sound awareness and speech skills that develop in the preschool years.
Preschool years, around age 3 to 4
This is where early risk signs often emerge.
By around age 4, children should be developing strong phonological processing and phonemic awareness skills. Children may be at higher risk for later reading and spelling difficulties if they:
- struggle to recognise or produce rhymes
• cannot clap or count syllables in words
• have difficulty hearing the beginning sounds in words
• struggle to pronounce multisyllabic words clearly and accurately
Difficulty pronouncing longer words at this age is an important red flag. These speech and sound processing skills are directly linked to later reading and spelling success.
Kindergarten, around age 5
By Kindergarten, children should be:
• learning the sounds that letters make
• identifying first and last sounds in words
• blending sounds together to read simple words
• beginning to spell simple 3-4 sound words by sounding them out
• reading decodable books after a few terms of instruction eg, “Tim has a big tin”
If learning letter sounds is slow, effortful or inconsistent, or if a child cannot blend sounds to read simple decodable texts after explicit instruction, this is not a wait and see situation.
Year 1
By Year 1, most children are usually able to:
- Remember letter sounds quickly and automatically (without needing lots of thinking time)
- Sound out words for reading and spelling fairly easily (rather than guessing)
- Read simple “decodable” books more smoothly over time
- Spell simple 4–5 sound words by stretching the word out and writing the sounds they hear (e.g., ship, hand, crunch)
At this stage, reading and spelling should be building steadily through sound-based skills.
Red flags include slow, laboured reading, difficulty spelling even simple words, guessing words while reading, avoidance of reading, or ongoing difficulty remembering letter sounds despite consistent teaching.
Year 2
By Year 2, children are expected to:
• read with increasing fluency and confidence
• use spelling patterns rather than sounding out every word
• understand what they read, not just decode it
• write sentences with developing spelling accuracy
If a child is still struggling significantly in Year 2, the gap between them and their peers often widens quickly without specialised intervention.
Why timing matters
The rate at which children can reach grade level reading decreases significantly with each year that intervention is delayed. Children who receive targeted support early have a far higher chance of becoming confident, independent readers.
Waiting until children are failing academically or emotionally makes intervention harder, longer and more costly.
How a speech pathologist helps
Speech pathologists are university trained to assess, diagnose and provide therapy for the underlying causes of literacy difficulties, including Dyslexia. We assess phonemic awareness, phonological processing, speech and broader language skills to understand exactly why reading and spelling are difficult.
If something does not feel right, even before your child is formally reading, trust that instinct. Early support can change a child’s entire learning trajectory