Phoneme Factory

Phoneme Factory is a multimedia screening and intervention system for use by speech and language therapists, teachers and parents with children who have speech impairment. It is particularly useful for children who need help in developing their skills of listening and discrimination of speech sounds or phonological awareness.

How can Phoneme Factory help in schools?

Phoneme Factory empowers teachers to screen children’s speech to identify whether a child needs referral to speech and language therapy. It can also help a child with known difficulties while waiting for Speech & Language Therapy intervention.

Phoneme Factory Phonology Screener

This software programme enables users to screen for speech impairment in children aged 4-8 years old. It is particularly useful for teaching staff who might wish to know whether or not a child needs to be referred to speech and language therapy because of unclear speech and pronunciation.

The Phonology Screener consists of:

• Child Assessment – assesses the child’s production of consonants and consonant clusters at the beginnings and ends of words and identifies the numbers of syllables produced by the child in multisyllabic words
• Phoneme Ready Reckoner – helps users distinguish between similar speech sounds used in the response options to the Screener
• Teacher training – contains practice screens for the user to work through prior to screening a child
• Reporting – delivers robust assessment results on the child’s phonological errors in relation to his or her age and recommends customised intervention activities to use from the SoundSorter software as well as guidance on whether or not the child needs referral to speech and language therapy
• Administration – multiple user capabilities and secure, efficient record-keeping

By Dr Yvonne Wren & Professor Sue Roulstone, Bristol Speech & Language Therapy Research Unit (BSLTRU).

If you would like to purchase Phoneme Factory then please follow the link to Stass Publications.

Phoneme Factory SoundSorter

This software programme provides a range of activities to develop children’s listening and discrimination of speech sounds.  It can be used by teaching staff in combination with the Phoneme Factory Phonology Screener which identifies specific pre-set activities on the SoundSorter to use with a particular child.  Alternatively it can be used by speech and language therapists to customise activities for a child’s specific pattern of speech sound errors through the selection of targets, contrasts, word position and other settings.

The SoundSorter software has 7 fun and engaging activities designed to develop a child’s listening skills and awareness of sounds in speech, helping the child to become more aware of the sounds used in speech.  These activities include sound matching, phoneme identification, phoneme blending, minimal pair discrimination and rhyme awareness tasks.

The Phoneme Factory SoundSorter is aimed at children aged between 4 and 8.  It consists of the following elements:

• Contains age-appropriate activities that develops a child’s listening and awareness of sounds in speech
• Provides busy teachers, SENCO’s and LSA’s with easy configuration, accessibility and record keeping options, consistent with common error patterns seen in young children’s speech
• Provides speech and language therapists with the option for more complex configurations for those children who are using unusual speech sound errors

By Dr Yvonne Wren & Professor Sue Roulstone, Bristol Speech & Language Therapy Research Unit (BSLTRU).

If you would like to purchase Phoneme Factory then please follow the link to Stass Publications.