Summer holiday groups at Spelfabet

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Bookings are now open for our intensive explicit, systematic synthetic phonics therapy groups in the week of 15-19 January 2024.

These are for young children (in school Years F-2 in 2023) who need extra help with learning to read and spell words by sounding them out.

Each group will run for an hour a day, and include plenty of games and fun. We will provide daily homework to complete and bring to the next session.

The groups will be:

TimeSkill levelExample words targeted
8.45am to 9.45amBeginners: VC and CVC words.at, in, hop, bus, red, fan, big
10.15am-11.15amAdding common suffixes to base words, doubling final consonants as needed. Introducing three “long” vowels with consonant-e/split/silent final e spellings, and when to drop final e before adding a suffix.
NB if you have a Year 3-4 child who needs this level of work, we may run a second group for them at 11.45am.
bat-batting, swim-swimmer, hop-hopped, run-runny, shade-shady, time, timer, hope, hoping
11.45am to 12.45pmAdjacent consonants: CVCC, CCVC, CCVCC, CCCVC, CVCCC.help, list, trap, stop, crust, strip, jumps
2.00pm to 3.00pmConsonant digraphs.wish, chat, fetch, this, when, quick, sing

We will provide all the necessary resources, including specialist take-home readers. We have a maximum of four children per speech pathologist in our groups, to keep the pace/intensity high. We match children carefully and ask that everyone comes prepared to attend all sessions and do all the homework.

Our groups will be held at our North Fitzroy office in Melbourne’s inner north, with attendance by appointment only. Spaces are limited, and upfront payment for all group sessions is required to secure a child’s place.  The cost of a week’s program is $720, which covers all sessions, materials and planning time, plus a brief final report with recommendations. Missed sessions are non-refundable. Private health rebates may apply, depending on your level/type of cover, but Medicare only provides rebates for individual therapy sessions.

Children not already known to us need to attend an assessment session with us before joining a group. This allows us to check whether we have a suitable group, and helps us cater for any special needs/interests. If we don’t have a group matching a child’s skills and needs, we can usually suggest other intervention options.

Please contact Tiana Knights on admin@spelfabet.com.au, (03) 8528 0138 or text 0434 902 249 if you’d like to find out more about these groups, or book an assessment for a struggling reader/speller.

Embedded Picture Mnemonic picture files

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Example bookmarks for Sounds-Write beginners, whipped in a word processor table in about 30 mins.

Since devising the Spelfabet Embedded Picture Mnemonics, illustrator Cat Macinnes and I have received many requests for products containing them: bookmarks, placemats, friezes, flip charts, cards and posters of different sizes, slideshows, you name it. They’ll even make an appearance on The US Reading League’s Reading Buddies TV show at some stage. The Science of Reading community is a creative one.

Sadly, we don’t have capacity to print, store and mail out lots of hard copy resources containing our mnemonics. If you know of an interested publisher, we’d love to hear from them! Even designing and producing all the downloadable resources people have suggested would be a full-time job for quite a while. We aren’t designers, and already have full-time jobs.

We’re therefore making high-resolution versions of the picture files (.png files, for both PC and Apple) available for people to download and use in creating resources for their own students/caseloads/children. This should make it easy to organise them into any phonics teaching sequence, and print customised materials for any group of beginning readers. Click here to download a zipped folder of the whole set.

Over time, we’ve created alternate versions of some mnemonics, thanks to feedback from purchasers, and in an effort to cater to a surprisingly large audience. Our original ‘e/egg’, ‘o/orange’ and ‘u/undies’ mnemonics were OK for Australian English, but ‘e/echo’, ‘o/octopus and ‘u/up’ were needed for speakers of US English. Recently we’ve discovered that some people aren’t keen on ‘y/yoga’, so we’ve added this nice y/yawn mnemonic to the set.

The zipped folder of picture files includes all the mnemonics we’ve produced to date (except the ‘th/path’ and ‘th/weather’ ones, which weren’t a hit), so when there’s a choice, please use the one that suits you best. In parts of rural Australia where doors aren’t often locked, k/kangaroo is probably a better choice than ‘k/key’. On a surf-mad coast ‘ur/surf’ might make more sense than ‘ur/burn’. In the US, ‘air/hair’ and ‘ear/gears’ aren’t needed, but ‘aw/claw’ is, and ‘wh/whale’ might be (in places where ‘witch’ and ‘which’ aren’t homophones).

When you introduce ‘long’ vowels, you might like to make little strips for student desks like this…

…or a strip like this might suit your students/teaching sequence better:

Hooray, everyone will be able to tailor the set to their accent/sequence/needs, including people who speak Englishes other than Australian, British and American. Cat already put time and talent into drawing all the mnemonics, so you might as well use whichever suit you best (yes, we prefer ‘u/undies’, and people keep asking us to bring it back, ha ha).

Artists should be paid properly for their work, so please respect Cat’s copyright and abide by the terms of use included in the pack. Pricing is based on the assumption that each teacher/therapist/parent who buys the files will use them as they see fit with their class/caseload/family members, and not share them with other professionals or use them for commercial purposes. It’s OK for parents to share printouts with little cousins or the kid next door, but if a school with five Early Years teachers wants to use them in a range of resources across five Early Years classrooms, the school should buy five copies.

The picture files are in .png format, which is the best format for storing high-resolution artwork. They are in a zipped folder which looks like this in the Downloads area of the Spelfabet shop:

Download it to your computer, and you’ll be able to unzip it and access the files, and save them somewhere easy to find and use. Don’t panic if you double-click on a file and it opens in your default picture program and looks a bit weird. The pictures should look as you expect when you drop them into documents. Please reduce picture file size first if they’re too big for your purposes, so the resources you make from them don’t take up lots of space on your computer or take ages to print out. Like adding salt when cooking, it’s easy to make files smaller and lower-resolution, but not reverse the process.

As reading researchers might have predicted, lots of people have told us they’ve been surprised how quickly children have learnt sound-letter relationships using the Spelfabet Embedded Picture Mnemonics. We hope that’s true of any young beginners you try them with, and that you find them quick and easy to turn into great, affordable resources that suit your accent, location and teaching sequence.

Click here to get the whole set.

“Can I halp you?” The Salary-Celery merger

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Image: Free Clip Art: Wikimedia

If you’re in south-eastern Australia or New Zealand, you’ve probably noticed kids pronouncing words with /e/ (as in ‘egg’) more like /a/ (as in ‘at’) before the sound /l/.

They say things like ‘Can I halp you?’, ‘I falt a bit sick’ and ‘I can do it mysalf’. They pronounce ‘salary’ and ‘celery’ as homophones, hence the name linguists have given this vowel shift: the Salary-Celery merger.

The ‘a’ before /l/ in ‘asphalt’ was being pronounced /e/ when I was scraping my knees on it at school, but ‘a’ pronounced /e/ mainly occurs before /n/, as in ‘any’, ‘many’, ‘secondary’ and ‘dromedary’.

Several other vowels have also morphed a bit before /l/, consider:

  • all, ball, call, fall, gall, hall, mall, also, almost, always etc (but not ‘shall’, ‘ally’, ‘alley’, ‘ballad’, ‘gallop’, ‘pallet’, ‘tally’ or ‘alas’).
  • walk, talk, chalk, stalk, and baulk (US balk) and caulk (US calk).
  • half/halve, calf/calve, behalf (but not ‘salve’ or ‘valve’).
  • salt, halt, malt, gestalt, alter, exalt, Walter (but not ‘shalt’).
  • fault, vault, cauldron, assault, cauliflower, hydraulic, somersault (but not ‘haul’ or ‘maul’).

The sound /l/ has a vowel-like quality and tends to ‘colour’ the preceding vowel. This is useful for teachers to know, so they can give any confused kids plenty of practice spelling affected words (there’s lots of opportunities to practice writing ‘short vowels’ in a range of phonetic contexts, including before /l/, in Spelfabet Workbook 1)

When kids insist that they hear an /a/ (as in ‘cat’) in ‘halp’, I ask them to say the word in their ‘spelling voice’ (as it’s written), with /e/ (as in ‘red’). Good spellers often say that they pronounce odd spellings a bit weirdly when writing them (Wed-nes-day, bus-i-ness), as a kind of mnemonic. Spelling pronunciations sometimes crop up in comedy too, for example the kniggits in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Prof Linnea Ehri (2nd from left) with Nicola Anglin, Alison Clarke, Maria Narouz and Adrianna Galioto of Spelfabet

US reading/spelling guru Professor Linnea Ehri was recently here in Melbourne courtesy of Learning Difficulties Australia (the selfie at right proves we met her), and talked about this strategy, which she calls the “Spelling Pronunciation Strategy”. She says that in Connectionist theory, to put a word’s spelling into long-term memory, the letters must be connected to ‘phoneme mates’ in the pronunciations of the word.

To use the Spelling Pronunciation Strategy (AKA “Spelling Voice” in the program Sounds-Write) you separate and say each syllable with stress, and pronounce all the letters. Prof Ehri’s examples were “ex cell ent ”, “lis ten”, “choc o late”, and “Feb ru ary”. She cited two studies (Drake & Ehri, 1984 and Ocal & Ehri, 2017) showing that assigning spelling pronunciations enhanced memory for spellings, in 4th graders and college students.

So in summary, it’s not just harmless to say words in a slightly funny way to halp, sorry, help yourself remember their spellings. It’s officially evidence-based.

Phonics With Feeling Set 10 now available

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I’ve just put six brand new Set 10 Phonics With Feeling printable decodable readers into the Spelfabet website shop. Like all these books, they cost 40c per print to make 5 copies, or 20c per print to make 30 copies. You provide the paper/card, printer and assembly time, which of course adds to the real cost, but if you’re short of funds, these are a very affordable way to boost your library of decodable text.

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New printable decodable books, including an extra free one

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To celebrate the removal of predictable texts and multicueing from the Australian National Curriculum (yippee!), more Phonics with Feeling printable decodable books are now available from the Spelfabet website.

These provide an affordable way to help Year 1 and 2 students, advanced Foundation students, and slightly older strugglers to build decoding skills. They are longer than most decodable books, allowing for cohesive narratives, entertaining plots, engaging characters, and themes worth talking about.

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New 2 ways to spell vowels cards, including a free deck

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Some students need smaller-than-average steps and extra practice to get spelling patterns into long-term memory. Games are a great, nag-free way to get in lots of targeted, extra repetitions.

The newest set of download-and-print Spelfabet phonics playing cards has 14 decks, each with one vowel sound spelt two ways, and includes a free sample deck:

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New decodable books for ‘o as in love’ and ‘a’ as in ‘ball’

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The spellings ‘o’ as in ‘love’ and ‘a’ as in ‘ball’ are in many words young children try to write. ‘One’, ‘love’, ‘some’, ‘once’, ‘all’, and ‘called’ are in the first 100 words on the Oxford Wordlist, ‘brother’, ‘other’, ‘come’, ‘water’, ‘also’, and ‘ball’, are in the 2nd 100, ‘won’ is number 206 and ‘small’ is number 228. *

However, these spelling patterns are often taught quite late in phonics teaching sequences. Many words containing these spellings are in early decodable book ‘tricky words’ lists.

Two new download-and-print Phonics With Feeling books allow children to practise words with these spellings, and notice the patterns in how they’re used: ‘love’, ‘dove’, ‘shove’, ‘glove’, ‘some’, ‘come’, ‘done’, ‘none’, ‘won’, ‘son’, ‘other’, ‘brother’, ‘mother’, ‘honey’, ‘money’ and ‘monkey, and ‘all’, ‘ball’, ‘call’, ‘fall’, ‘hall’, ‘mall’, ‘tall’, ‘wall’, ‘stall’, and ‘small’.

These new books expand the Extended Code Set 1 from three to five books. They otherwise contain only Initial Code spellings, plus the small number of ‘tricky words’ listed at the start of each book for pre-teaching. This means skilled teachers can slot them into phonics teaching sequences without introducing other, more difficult sound-spelling relationships.

The Monkeys’ Wedding

In Zulu, a sunshower is called umshado wezinkawu, meaning ‘monkey’s wedding’, so in some parts of Africa and the Caribbean, people say it’s a monkey’s wedding when the sun appears during rain. The new Phonics With Feeling Extended Code Set 1 book ‘The Monkeys’ Wedding’ is a cute, rhyming story of two monkeys in love whose wedding is almost spoilt by rain:

As well as giving children decoding and vowel-flexing practice, I love that this book offers an opportunity to discuss idioms, and that the idiom it refers to comes from a language and culture many English-speakers know little about.

Author and illustrator Gaia (AKA Teresa) Dovey has excelled herself with this book’s illustrations. The monkeys look fluffy enough to pat, and there are some gleefully naughty-looking little ones.

Up The Wall

The second new Extended Code Set 1 book, ‘Up The Wall’, also presents an opportunity to discuss literal and figurative meanings. It begins with a mother telling her children they’re driving her up the wall playing soccer in the hall, so they decide to go to the mall where there is a climbing wall. One child races to the top of the wall but then freezes, afraid he’ll fall. His mother must literally go up the wall to coax him, red-faced, back down. This series is not called Phonics With Feeling for nothing!

Free quizzes, and free upgrade if you have EC Set 1 already

Quizzes about these and all the other Phonics With Feeling books are available free on Wordwall, or you can download them here. Use them as is, or put some or all questions into Kahoots or other formats to suit your learners. There’s been a slight edit to the first Extended Code Set 1 book, Nancy Visits the City, which is reflected in its updated quiz, and a few other improvements across other books in the series.

Everyone who bought the original Extended Code Set 1 when it had only three books has been sent the new set of five books and updated quizzes via We Transfer. If that includes you, please download the files quickly, before the transfer expires, and let us know if you have difficulty.

Print up to 5 books @ 40c per copy, or up to 30 books @ 20c per copy

All the Phonics With Feeling books are available in either parent/aide sets (print up to 5 copies for 40c per print) or bulk teacher/clinician sets (print up to 30 copies for 20c per print). You provide the paper/card, printer and time printing and assembling them, so please factor these into your ‘is this good value?’ decision-making.

The Phonics With Feeling books aren’t for absolute beginners, as there are already plenty of good decodable books available for them. Some children will be able to read them towards the end of their first year of school, but they’re mostly for children in their second or third year of school, or slightly older catch-up learners.

More information about these books, including how to print and assemble them, can be found in this 2021 blog post. There is also an author interview here, and information about each book’s title, target spelling(s), number of words and plot in its entry in the Spelfabet shop. If you don’t already have the free sample book, it’s here.

* In the first 200 Oxford words containing a one-letter ‘o’ spelling, it is pronounced as in ‘got’ 15 times, as in ‘love’ 8 times, as in ‘so’ 7 times and as in ‘to’ 5 times.