An Earlier View of Reading: SCAN is the Key Principle
SCAN empowers us to focus on using spoken language to point out real people and real things — the first and most powerful purpose of speech.
Socially Contextual Applied Naming (SCAN) is an evidence-informed “grounding” principle that is key for early spoken language and literacy. It is the real-world act of pointing out real people, objects and places in a shared social context — using speech — so spoken language scaffolds into comprehension, enabling early language development to align with literacy milestones.
How SCAN Works
SCAN uses common sense to unify:
■ Phonetics — hearing and distinguishing speech sounds
■ Speech Production — producing those sounds correctly
■ Naming — tying a spoken word to an object or person
■ Social Interaction — joint attention
■ Experience — live settings
Naming vs. Phonics
If phonics breaks spoken words into sounds, naming makes those sounds mean something.
Phonics: C – A – R
Naming: “CAR” = a real or imaginary car 🚗
Without naming, decoding remains abstract.
Why SCAN Matters in Literacy
By naming real people and real things through spoken prompts within a text-based picture-book narrative, children naturally scaffold oracy into literacy comprehension and bridge phonics.
In order for children to read globally — with automaticity and comprehension — they first need to connect spoken language to meaning. SCAN makes this key principle visible, and WHO WILL WE SEE? prompts children to literally apply it from the start.
Early Literacy Comprehension Pathway
1. Start with lived reality
Begin with a real, familiar person whom the child can learn to recognise consistently.
2. Hold dynamic reality still
Place that same real person into the book as a photograph, allowing the child to stay with and examine someone they normally experience moving and changing.
3. Carry reality into fiction, imagination and reading for pleasure
Place the familiar photograph within a fictional lift-the-flap story. The child can recognise someone real while the flap, clues and story stimulate anticipation, prediction, imagination and enjoyment of shared reading.
4. Readers model saying the name
The reader says the person’s name, focusing attention and connecting the real person, their photograph and the spoken word, so the spoken name is grounded in someone real.
5. Prompt the child to practise saying the name through equitable participation
Repeat the pause–reveal–prompt routine, giving the child an on-cue opportunity to recognise, predict and practise saying the person’s name, while allowing different levels of participation and response.
6. Model using the same name in everyday social interaction
Continue using the person’s name naturally with the real person, reinforcing that the name used in the story still points to the same person in everyday life and modelling application through real-life social interaction.
7. Generalise meaning before increasing abstraction
By encountering the same person and name in lived reality, imaginative picture-book fiction and eventually through spoken words or text alone, the child can recognise that the same meaning carries across different contexts.
The efficiency point: meaning is grounded before increasing abstraction, rather than asking the child to reconstruct meaning afterwards from decontextualised material.
8. WHO WILL WE SEE? scaffolds literacy comprehension
WHO WILL WE SEE? begins with the richer, moving reality of a familiar person, holds that person still in a photograph, carries them into imaginative fiction, connects their name across the story and real life, and gradually generalises that same meaning into spoken words and eventually text — modelling how language and literacy continue to point to understood reality.
9. Phonics can develop alongside this
Phonics can develop alongside this, connecting the sounds of meaningful spoken language with the letters that represent them, completing this foundational pathway into literacy comprehension.
WHO WILL WE SEE?
WHO WILL WE SEE? is a personalised lift-the-flap storybook that prompts early speech while helping young children learn names, build social connections, and engage with print and literacy through meaningful real-world relationships.
It turns the first words children care about — the names of themselves and the people around them — into a structured foundational scaffold for oracy, literacy comprehension, inclusion, lifelong learning and application.
WHO WILL WE SEE? uses state-of-the-art print design — photo personalisation, windowed lift-the-flaps and a play-based, equitable participatory shared-reading routine — to scaffold and prompt early spoken language, with comprehension carried into literacy for all, including SEND and EAL.
Its reading-for-pleasure pedagogy is built into the pause–reveal–prompt sequence, scaffolding oracy into literacy comprehension before and alongside phonics.
By connecting names to familiar real people, it helps children stay with what is real long enough for meaning to form, before carrying that meaning through spoken language and into literacy comprehension.
◇ Passport-style photo-fiction storytelling and lift-the-flap turn-taking prompts support early spoken language while building reader identity, belonging and inclusion.
□ Ages 1–5 and SEND, including EAL
Why Integrate WHO WILL WE SEE?
Proactive-protective early language and literacy support
Supports early oral-language production and literacy comprehension without delaying phonics.
Interactive name-learning routine
Sequences an interactive name-learning activity as an introduction to formal literacy, while empowering the existing workforce to model conversation and naturally extend dialogue.
Built-in Reading for Pleasure pedagogy
Embeds reader identity, delight, anticipation and shared participation within the reading experience.
Universal and multifaceted
Tailored yet highly accessible, prodigy-ready while remaining SEND- and EAL-inclusive, anti-bias, culturally adaptable, and designed to build identity and belonging.
Wider developmental value
Subtly supports emerging metacognition, executive function, cognition, Personal Social-Emotional Development (PSED) and numeracy.
Supports transitions
Supports transitions from home to nursery and preschool to reception. No specialist training is required — simply set up and read once a day as part of an induction routine.
Makes evidence-informed practice visible
Brings established evidence-informed early-education practice together within a structured, accessible and repeatable routine.
SCAN Professional Development
SCAN, SCAN P.D. & WHO WILL WE SEE?
An Implementation-Ready Theory of Change, Professional Development Model & Matched Classroom Resource
■ SCAN defines the mechanism.
■ SCAN P.D. is the adult behaviour change required to enact SCAN.
■ WHO WILL WE SEE? integrates it and operationalises it in the classroom.
Together, they translate converging evidence from developmental science, cognitive science, speech and language research, and early literacy into a small, tightly defined set of high-leverage interaction behaviours that can be implemented consistently and monitored reliably.
SCAN P.D.
SCAN P.D. is not just a one-off training session. It is a structured implementation model embedded within the daily classroom routine, designed to move from training to practice, monitoring and refinement.
It focuses on a tightly defined set of observable, evidence-aligned behaviours:
◆ Establishing joint attention through guided shared attention
◆ Using contingent adult–child turns
◆ Applying calibrated expectant pauses
◆ Keeping prompts low in cognitive load
◆ Ensuring inclusive participation, including SEND and EAL, with non-verbal responses scaffolded towards spoken production
◆ Explicitly applying SCAN’s core comprehension principle through literacy: understanding what language points to, beginning with the names of real people and real things
These behaviours are rehearsed daily within the predictable:
Ask → Wait → Reveal → Child Turn
shared-reading routine.
Implementation is supported by:
● Brief micro-training cycles
● Scripted guidance
● Explicit modelling
● Built-in fidelity checks, including child-turn counts, strictly silent child counts, on-cue naming and participation parity
● Regular review and refinement to support long-term habit formation
This is deliberate practice with monitoring.
WHO WILL WE SEE? Operationalises SCAN P.D.
WHO WILL WE SEE? is a personalised lift-the-flap storybook that enables children to enact SCAN’s core comprehension principle — understanding what spoken language and print point to, beginning with real people and real things.
Through names, photographs and guided play, the routine makes early reading:
■ Socially meaningful
■ Emotionally salient
■ Developmentally aligned
■ Inclusive by design
■ Identity-affirming
■ Participation-equalising
It remains low-cost, scalable and straightforward to implement with fidelity.
Theory of Change
The model aims to support:
■ More equitable participation
■ More spoken-language turns
■ Fewer strictly silent children
■ More identity-linked language production
■ Earlier opportunities for the initiation of speech before referral thresholds are reached
These shifts strengthen oral-language foundations — supporting phonics and literacy development without delaying systematic phonics instruction.
The model is upstream, preventative and complementary to specialist provision — not a replacement for it.
WHO WILL WE SEE? at a Glance
Literally the Best Start for All.
WHO WILL WE SEE? helps prompt early speech through a delightful, play-based shared-reading routine grounded in equitable participation, with reading-for-pleasure pedagogy built into its pause–reveal–prompt sequence.
It turns meaningful real-world relationships into a structured foundation for:
■ Oracy
■ Literacy comprehension
■ Reader identity
■ Belonging and inclusion
■ Social connection
■ Lifelong learning and application
📔 Storybook from £4.99 + P&P
🤳 Free Photo Tool
🌐 www.whowillwesee.com
Donation Offer
Copies of WHO WILL WE SEE? are available to donate free of charge to suitable early-years, family, education, SEND, literacy or community organisations.
There is no commercial obligation attached. We would simply like the books to reach young children and families who may genuinely benefit from them.
If your organisation is interested, please get in touch to discuss quantities and delivery.
#SCAN #ProfessionalDevelopment #EarlyYears #OralLanguage #SharedReading #ReadingForPleasure #SEND #EAL #LiteracyFoundations