Orthographic mapping
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Orthographic mapping is the mental process of connecting a word's sounds to its letters so the word is stored in memory and read instantly.
Topic: Reading and writing instruction
In plain terms
Readers do not memorize words as visual shapes. They map each sound to its spelling, and after a few successful readings the word becomes a "sight word" recognized without effort. Orthographic mapping depends on phonemic awareness and phonics knowledge, which is why students with weak sound skills struggle to build a large sight vocabulary.
How it shows up in an IEP
Goals for automatic word reading are supported by teaching that links sounds and letters, including for irregular words, rather than by flashcard memorization alone.
Example
To learn "said," a student says the sounds /s/ /e/ /d/, matches s, ai and d to them, and notes that "ai" is the unusual part. After several readings, the student reads it instantly.
Related terms
- Phonemic awarenessPhonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify and change the individual sounds, called phonemes, in spoken words.
- PhonicsPhonics is instruction that teaches how letters and letter patterns represent the sounds of spoken language, so students can decode and spell words.
- High-frequency wordsHigh-frequency words are the words that appear most often in text, such as the, of, and, was and said.
- DecodingDecoding is using knowledge of letter-sound patterns to read a printed word by turning letters into sounds and blending them.
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