Spelfabet

Free phonics intervention PD & holiday plans

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A free Sounds-Write Symposium on phonics interventions will be happening from June 24th to 27th. I’ll be one of the presenters, talking about using manipulatives to build words from bases, prefixes and suffixes, sometimes adjusting junctures in the process (doubling final consonants, dropping final e, changing y to i, assimilating prefixes).

Wordy rules with lots of ‘if-then’ and ‘all except’ type language tend to be poorly understood by young children, and children with language difficulties, so showing them how to build words can be far more effective. Also, kids enjoy flipping tiles over and crashing them into each other as they build words.

The symposium has heaps of interesting sessions from a range of international speakers. I’m especially looking forward to Prof Julian Elliott’s possibly-provocative keynote: “Rethinking Dyslexia: From Diagnostic Labels to Evidence-Based Reading Support”, and I always learn something from speakers like Marnie Ginsberg, Norah Chahbazi, Tricia Millar and Mandy Nayton. You can check out the program and book your ticket here.

School holiday literacy intensives

At Spelfabet in North Fitzroy we are once again offering literacy intensives in the upcoming school holidays (7th to 18th July 2025) for children struggling to keep up with reading/writing at school. These provide a burst of personalised, intensive intervention (3-5 sessions), plenty of home practice activities, and a report with recommendations. Click here for more details.

Assessments

Many of our regular clients are away or take a therapy break during school holidays, so we have more time to offer speech, language and literacy assessments. Standardised tests are expensive, so not every Speech Pathologist can afford every test they’d like to use. Waiting lists for speech and/or language assessments are often frustratingly long. Please let us know if you’d like us to do an assessment for you, or someone you know, during the school holidays. More details are here.

Alison Clarke

Speech Pathologist