What Does Sound-to-Print Look Like in a Real Classroom?

Full Webinar Transcript

Introduction (0:00–5:00)

A few weeks ago, we ran a webinar titled "We Switched from OG to Sound-to-Print, and Here's What Happened" — with a school leader and a district leader sharing their experience. After that webinar, people kept asking: Can we see Sound-to-Print in action?

That's what this is. A short walkthrough of how Sound-to-Print actually works in a classroom, with two CAPIT teachers — Raquel and Stephanie — who'll share their experience implementing it.

I want to be upfront: I'm going to be showing you the CAPIT system specifically. CAPIT isn't the only Sound-to-Print curriculum out there. There are other excellent ones, but there are still very few Sound-to-Print programs in US schools. Our goal is to help educators see what they're overlooking by sticking with traditional phonics and Orton-Gillingham-based methods.

The message I'll repeat throughout: when you switch to Sound-to-Print, everything becomes easier. Easier to teach. Easier to learn. More effective across all three tiers. You can use the same system for every student, with modifications.

What I'm showing you today is a complete solution — Tier 1 core instruction, Tier 2 intervention, Tier 3 special education, plus handwriting, spelling, and decodable reading practice — all in one system. A proper Sound-to-Print implementation tends to replace two, three, or even four programs that schools are currently running in parallel.

What Makes Sound-to-Print Different (5:00–10:30)

Three things I want you to take away about Sound-to-Print and the CAPIT system: how we use cognitive science, our patented technology, and our algorithm.

Start with cognitive science. When you're teaching Sound-to-Print, you're reducing the clutter. Instead of layering on strategies — rhymes, onsets, vowel rules, long-and-short vowels, sight words, syllable types — you're teaching one thing: here's a sound, and here's how you spell it.

English is unique because most sounds have multiple spelling patterns. We call these spelling alternatives. This is what makes English an outlier orthography. But here's the thing: once you know all the sounds and all the spelling patterns, you're a reader and a speller. That's all there is to it. This lets us build a curriculum that's clean and simple. We don't need games to entertain the child. We don't need to dress up the lesson. Here's a sound. Here's how you spell it. Now use it in a word. Now read this sentence. Now spell this word.

The first step is teaching sound-to-symbol correspondences — starting with the letters of the alphabet, uppercase and lowercase. We use visual mnemonics for each one. The mnemonics look and sound like the letter, which gives students a base to launch from. Kindergarten teachers using CAPIT see their students learning letters and sounds in a few weeks, where it used to take a year.

Here's the heart of it: Sound-to-Print is the first conceptual program for teaching reading in English.

What do I mean by conceptual? Humans are conceptual beings. When we learn about the world, we don't just see one thing, then another, then another. We group things — mammals, birds, numbers. There's no such thing as "ten" in nature. There are just things, and our minds organize them into groups of ten. This is how human cognition works.

Traditional phonics — and Orton-Gillingham — is perceptual. You see this letter; it makes this sound. You see that letter; it makes that sound. There's no relationship between what letters are doing and what sounds they're producing. It's one giant mess. Ask any literate adult: how does English work? They have no idea. Ask them how many sounds are in the English language. They won't even understand the question — they'll think you're asking about the 26 letters.

We've been teaching children as if they were tiny computers tracking individual letters, when in fact they're conceptual learners looking for a system.

Sound-to-Print flips the script. It gives students a conceptual folder to hold the information. That folder isn't the letter — the letter is a perceptual entity. The folder is the sound. When we hear the sound /a/, that's the folder. Under that folder, we show the ways to spell /a/. Then we show /b/ and its spellings. And so on.

This is how we built what we call the Periodic Table for the English Language — our sound chart. The periodic table breaks the entire universe down into elements. We broke down the entire English language into one chart: all the sounds on one side, all the spelling patterns for each sound on the other. That's the basis of the program.

The curriculum has five levels. Level 1 is the basic sounds and the letters of the alphabet. Level 2 (kindergarten) is VC and CVC words, building to complete sentences. Level 3 introduces consonant clusters, basic digraphs, and diphthongs. Levels 4 and 5 are the spelling alternatives — all the ways the sounds students already know can be spelled. By the end of Level 3, students are familiar with every sound in English. The rest is rinse and repeat: here's another way to spell /b/, here's another way to spell /c/, and so on.

This is the system that works across all three tiers. Orton-Gillingham can work for Tier 1 students — strong learners doing well — because there's enough scaffolding to absorb the complexity of syllable division and the rest. But you can't use that system for special education students. They can't follow that many directions. Strip it down to "listen to the sound; here are the ways to spell it," and these students, who have been failing for years, are reading for the first time. It's incredible to see in our SPED schools. And it's simple enough that it works in preschool too.

Live Classroom Demo (10:30–18:00)

The demo shown in the webinar walks through an actual CAPIT lesson on the /er/ sound — specifically, students learning the IR spelling (as in bird) as their second spelling for the /er/ sound.

The lesson flow:

1. Sound introduction. The student hears the /er/ sound (already learned) and sees a new spelling: IR.

2. Word application. The new spelling appears immediately in a real word — bird — broken into its sounds: /b/ /ir/ /d/.

3. Segmenting. Students segment the word into its sounds using color-coding.

4. Spelling. Students spell bird, in order, using the new spelling pattern.

5. Periodic Table update. The new IR spelling visibly flies into the student's Sound Chart — the Periodic Table for the English Language — joining the spellings they've already collected. Students literally see their knowledge accumulating.

6. Vocabulary practice. Students read and define new words that use the IR spelling, with audio definitions and example sentences.

7. Spelling test. Students must spell 10 words correctly to advance.

8. Decodable reading. A connected passage that uses the new IR spelling extensively — words like sir, skirt, smirk, bird — letting students read fluent connected text on day one.

When you look at the Sound Chart at any moment, you see the same structure: a sound, plus all the ways to spell it. The /v/ sound has three spelling patterns. The /a/ sound has two. The /e/ sound has ten. As students progress, they're exposed to every single one.

This isn't just digital. Every lesson has downloadable worksheets — both beginner and advanced — plus fluency passages for repeated practice and comprehension. Teachers can put the words on the board, read them with the class, or send them home.

Stephanie's Story (18:00–25:00)

Stephanie, 2nd-grade teacher, Missouri

We found CAPIT after COVID, and we knew our students were coming in below where they'd typically be. My partner teacher and I tried it on a hunch.

What surprised me first was the excitement. Kids would say, "It's CAPIT time!" — and the enthusiasm didn't fade across the year. We never had to pump it up. We've now used CAPIT for several years, and our first-grade classes use it too because we brag about it to colleagues.

The way I implement it: at the start of the year, I build excitement around what CAPIT is, why it helps, and the fact that English actually makes sense — something kids don't otherwise feel. I introduce the alphabet song if they haven't learned it, do whole-group instruction on whatever lesson the CAPIT dashboard suggests, and tie it to whatever spelling pattern we're focused on for the week. Then students work independently 20 to 40 minutes a day, five days a week. We also use CAPIT's games for reinforcement.

The biggest change we've seen is confidence. Especially in struggling readers. Kids who'd hit a wall with reading because nothing made sense could now go home and tell their parents, "This is why the B makes the sound — it sounds like 'bat.'" They had a reason and a structure.

The differentiation piece is what makes CAPIT possible for me as a teacher. In a typical phonics curriculum, everyone learns the same skill the same day. The next day, you move on — and the kids who weren't ready start falling further behind. With CAPIT, my students are across four different levels (Level 2 through Level 5) at the same time. They don't notice or compare. They just progress at their own pace. I can meet more students at their actual level instead of constantly reteaching.

CAPIT also gives me a real answer to "why does this word work this way?" — instead of "just because." That's what I got growing up. Why is it 'said' and not 'sed'? Just because. Now I have an explanation, and students who want to understand the why finally can.

Raquel's Story (25:00–end)

Raquel, kindergarten teacher, New Mexico

We've been using CAPIT for a few years, too. It's funny to see kindergartners who started with us now in third grade — still using the same program, still doing great.

How I implement it: CAPIT is non-negotiable. We do it every single day. Once kids return from their specials, they grab their whiteboards, sit on the carpet, and we do whole-group instruction first — because that's how it's supposed to be done. CAPIT's dashboard tells me exactly which lesson to start with. Then, students do their individual work. Some of my kindergartners are on Level 2; some are already on Level 4. We're not holding anyone back.

My favorite thing about CAPIT: there are no directions to read. Students get on Day 1 and just know how to work the program. They don't have to read instructions or listen to me explain it. It's perfect for our English Language Learner population — we have a high ELL population in our school — and it works for them without modification.

One detail from when I first started: the moment after CAPIT training, I went to my classroom and took down my alphabet. I put up our letter sounds instead. I've never put the alphabet back up.

A few years ago, our superintendent emailed all our teachers asking, "Do you want to keep CAPIT, or look at something else?" The overwhelming response was that nobody even wanted to look. Preschool through third-grade teachers, the ELL teacher, the principal — everyone was on board. Nobody wanted to change.

On the question of struggling readers in my classroom: I've been asked whether I just don't get struggling readers. I have a high-ELL classroom in New Mexico. These aren't selected, high-performing students. They're normal kids. They might be nicer than average — but they aren't smarter, and they aren't easier. They get across the finish line every year because of CAPIT.

The kids motivate themselves. They ask if they can do CAPIT during free time. They choose learning over a break. The program never includes gaming elements, and we intentionally don't add any — we believe learning is a form of play when it's done right. Kids enjoy mastering things. We just had to find the right way to convey the information so success was visible.

Closing

If you want to learn more about Sound-to-Print — sometimes called Linguistic Phonics or Speech-to-Print — start with Diane McGuinness's books, and explore the resources on our website. CAPIT exists because we believe Sound-to-Print is the way to solve the reading problem at scale. If every classroom used a Sound-to-Print program, we would not be hearing about a reading crisis or reading wars. Every kid would be reading by the end of kindergarten, the way Raquel's kids are. There would be nothing left to debate.