30% discount on all Spelfabet materials

10 Replies

As part of the sector-wide effort to help parents teach their children at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, all phonemic awareness and phonics resources in the Spelfabet online shop are now 30% off.

These materials are digital downloads, so you don’t need to leave home to get them.  You just need a computer, internet, printer and paper/light card, plus a laminator is useful for some items. There’s lots of information in the shop about each item, usually including a video link.

Type “COVID-19” in the “Coupon” field at the online checkout to get the discount. This coupon will be valid till June 30th 2020. Sorry it’s not indefinite, and not everything is free, but like most people working in small businesses, we’re a little uncertain about the future, while counting our many blessings, like homes with space, internet access, food supplies and running water.

I’ve also made a new video for the website’s home page, to help parents get their heads around how children learn to read, and quickly show them some of our resources:

COVID-19 put all of us at Spelfabet on an near-vertical telehealth learning curve, but happily our online therapy sessions have been going well, and our clients are booking in for more.

In between online sessions, this week I’ll be catching up on reading and working on the website: refreshing information, adding more playing cards and videos, and otherwise trying to make the site as useful as possible throughout this difficult time.

If you have any suggestions of ways to make the Spelfabet site more useful to you, I’d be very happy to hear them.

Stay well and keep being a soapy hero!

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10 responses to “30% discount on all Spelfabet materials”

  1. Deb Medforth says:

    Very generous offer on your fabulous resources. Well done.

    • Cadence says:

      Hello. I identified problems with my daughter’s reading and writing in Year 2 and could not get anyone at school, including the principal and her teacher, to listen to me. Now, in Year 6, she is just getting the intervention she needs and we are awaiting her final testing for Dyslexia. She loves stories however and that I am thankful for (The latest was My Life As An Alphabet – hilarious!). I have been browsing some of the DSF and similar websites for years, but always get bamboozled because I can’t envisage how the plethora of resources could be used; what do I do with them? Will they create more tears? Will they be worth my money? In particular I have been looking for resources which encourage rapid letter and word naming and that won’t be met with groans of dissatisfaction because it looks too much like school work. I liked your simple and quick explanation video on how kids learn to read as it’s not overwhelming. I’ve also found watching the demonstrated card games quite funny. I am really pleased to have found Spelfabet and all its affordable resources, thanks a hundred times.

  2. Shae says:

    You’re the best! So generous. Wish you all thr best success.

  3. Linda Williams says:

    Great short and clear message in your video for parents- thanks Alison!

    • alison says:

      Thankyou, it’s very daggy and lowbrow, and as soon as I put it up I thought of a million ways to improve it, but anyway hopefully it’s good enough to be of some use.

  4. Tayo says:

    Hi Alison,

    I have your moveable alphbet resource. I was just wondering if you had a resource that was sort of opposite – that listed the sounds and the various ways they could be represented in letters. I am wanting to create a resource using cued articulation which shows the sound/gesture and then the ways it could be pronounced. It’s my attempt at helping out the students in schools who aren’t using systematic phonics approaches as well as older students. My idea is around looking for the spelling combination they’ve come across and finding the different ways it could be said until they can say a real word, if that makes sense. I was also thinking of putting velcro dots on them during intervention, as i systematically introduce different ways the sounds could be spelled, i could add on the ‘new’ code for that sound. Hope this makes sense, thanks in advance!

    • alison says:

      Hi Tayo, YES! That’s what my spelling lists on the website are meant to do. If you go to this link you can find all the spellings for each sound (at least as they are pronounced in my dialect): http://www.spelfabet.com.au/spelling-lists/sorted-by-sound. I also have a free booklet called Spelling Sorted that has wordlists organised by sound using the front index, and by spelling using the back index (www.spelfabet.com.au/materials/spelling-sorted-2), and there are a couple of free picture books (one has a single spelling for each sound but doesn’t include a couple of sounds that only appear in long words, see http://www.spelfabet.com.au/materials/first-phonics-picture-book-4), and one has multiple spellings for all 44 sounds (www.spelfabet.com.au/materials/44-sounds-200-spellings-2). I hope one or more of these are useful, and if they’re not exactly what you’re after, let me know in more detail what it is and I’ll try again. Alison

      • Tayo says:

        OH yes this is exactly what I’m after, thank you! Also just wondering if you’ve heard of ‘the logic of english’ book or website? I’m reading it now in the hopes that I can explain the rules to my students about when g for example says /dg/ versus /g/ and combine them with the resources I’ve purchased from here. There is also a 99 USD 40 hour course I’m considering for purchase as well. Also I’m in Aus as well though I’m an American SLP so it’s a bit of a double challenge with the rules I think!

        • alison says:

          Hi, I have heard of the Logic of English website but not the book. I think they also have an app. A lot of spelling can be explained by our having borrowed the Latin alphabet with only 5 vowel sounds (or 6 if you count y) and having to represent 20 vowel sounds with them. So we have a set of consonant spellings that also signify that the preceding vowel is a “short” or “checked” vowel (doubled consonants, ck, ng, dge, tch), and a different set of consonant spellings that go after “long” vowels. We also use the letters R, L, W and Y a lot in vowel spellings (as in car, for, her, walk, calm, salmon, slow, clown, saw, few, day, they, boy etc). Usually the consonants they represent are not pronounced when these spellings are at the end of words, but when a vowel suffix is added they are pronounced. Think about the y in play versus playing, the w in flow versus flowing and the r in bore versus boring (at least in Aussie English). So it’s a clever system, one I hope you enjoy studying and teaching. All the very best, Alison

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