Category Archives: sound-letter links

Here’s the video of my LDA webinar on spelling logic

About 400 people had signed up to attend the webinar I presented for Learning Difficulties Australia on Wednesday called “English spelling has five kinds of logic”, but sadly, the LDA Zoom account locked all but 100 people out. I’m so sorry about that, I didn’t even realise till the end.

Anyway, here’s the video, so you can watch it at your leisure. Sorry I say “um” so much! Below the video is a list of some of the resources I’ve found useful for online therapy sessions targeting spelling, reading and related skills (including irregular verbs, which someone asked about), since I couldn’t fit as much practical stuff into the webinar as I had hoped.

If you have feedback or questions, or any great online teaching/therapy resource tips, please leave a comment.

Useful resources for online learning/therapy during COVID-19

Decodable Readers Australia’s books are freely accessible online till 25th August.
The Flyleaf Online portal, where all their books are currently free online, with homework.
The ICT Games literacy activities.
Phonic Books At Home minibooks and activity sheets, targeting vowel spellings.
The Phonics Play Comics.
Powerpoint games
The Reading Elephant books.
The Reading Magic and Spelling Magic apps I mentioned in the webinar.
If you’re trained in Sounds-Write, try their interactive whiteboard activities, in Australia available from DSF for $95.
WordWall, where lots of people have made activities you can use, or you can make your own if you subscribe. Ones we’ve made, including sets that align with the Sounds-Write and Phonic Books Catch-Up Readers teaching sequence are here.

Black Sheep Press has lots of downloadable speech and language activities, including on irregular past tense here and here. There are also apps like Past Tense with Splingo, and the Toddlers Seek & Find apps let you make something fun happen then discuss it. The ELR resources are another option for all kinds of online language activities.

Speech Pathologists needing articulation materials, try the Pottstown Schools website.

Good luck, stay well, and remember when life gives you lemons, you can make lemon tart, lemon curd, avgolemono, lemon butter, lemon delicious…(I’m not much into lemonade).

PS Don’t miss Emily Hanford’s latest, again-excellent report “What the words say”.

English spelling has five kinds of logic

17 Replies

This Wednesday at 6pm AEST I’m presenting Learning Difficulties Australia’s free Weekly Wednesday Webinar (yikes, but I’m back on LDA’s Council so thought I’d better contribute. Also, here in Melbourne we’re going into Stage 4 lockdown, our Jacinda The Warrior Princess hammers ready to smash the virus, so I don’t have an awful lot else on).

Here’s a bit of a preview, to help you decide whether to attend live and ask me Hard Questions in the chat, or perhaps watch it later on Youtube.

The title of the webinar is “English spelling has five kinds of logic”, and I’m hoping it helps teachers and parents better understand and explain our superficially bizarre spelling system. Much of what I’ll say won’t be news to LDAers or other experts, but I hope they find some useful ideas, angles and resources, and maybe a few laughs, and will want to send the link to others. Continue reading →

Reading Eggs – Fast Phonics

22 Replies

Reading Eggs is a very popular early literacy program for young children, but to date I have not been much of a fan. Its logic has always seemed too Whole Language/Balanced Literacy. I didn’t include it in my Top Early Literacy Apps list earlier this year.

I was therefore pretty excited to hear that there is now a synthetic phonics version of Reading Eggs called Fast Phonics, and that it includes decodable books. I signed up for their 30-day trial (the sign-in options were “parent” or “teacher” so I tossed a coin and got “parent”), hoping to be able to enthusiastically recommend it. Continue reading →

Teaching vowel spellings with a moveable alphabet

1 Reply

Late last year we made some videos with the help of a couple of amazing kids. Heroic Harrison, then aged four, has already starred in a couple of blog posts about early literacy apps and Embedded Picture Mnemonics.

His sister Amazing Amelie, then aged seven, here helps me demonstrate an approach I use to teach about vowel spellings with the Spelfabet moveable alphabet. Sorry it’s taken me so long to put this video up, was already snowed under before we had to switch to online therapy.

You don’t have to use my download-and-print moveable alphabet for this activity if you have a similar one, including an online one, or prefer to make your own. You can also devise your own teaching sequences, or try my Level 3 sequences. If getting anything from my shop before 30 June 2020, don’t forget to use the COVID-19 coupon code to get 30% off.

Thanks to Amelie for her amazing help, and to Caitlin Stephenson for organising this.

More phonics playing cards

3 Replies

We have a new set of download-and-print decks of phonics playing cards, this time targeting more advanced spelling patterns. The cards are still child-sized (5 X 6.5cm) with words facing both up and down, making them easy to read from either side of a table.

The first few decks each target one sound (phoneme) spelt multiple ways:

Continue reading →

New moveable alphabet word sequences

Leave a reply

I’ve just written 30 pages of new word sequences/word chains for learners to build using my moveable alphabet. These cover the sound-spelling relationships that lend themselves to this type of word-building from my Workbook 3.

They cost $1.40 now everything in the Spelfabet shop is 30% off (use the COVID-19 coupon code. Sorry I can’t make everything free).

Sequences/word chains like these build phonemic awareness and sound-spelling knowledge, and are especially useful with kids who find handwriting difficult. They are hard to make up on the fly without tripping over words that don’t follow the pattern you’re trying to target.

First you make a word using the moveable alphabet, read it aloud, and then ask your learner to change it into a different word. They must consider the identity, order and number of sounds in the words, work out how and where the words differ, and make the relevant spelling change.

Having ready-made sequences allows you to present this activity at a fast pace, get through a lot of words in a short time, and not inadvertently confuse anyone with too many patterns at once.

Many of the readers of this blog probably already use the earlier, free sequences, so these ones probably don’t need lots of further explanation. I’ll just put a snippet here of what they look like, to give you the idea:

If you are getting them, don’t forget to put in the code “COVID-19” to get the 30% discount.

These sequences took me absolutely ages to make, so I hope you like them, and please send me any feedback you have on them. Stay well!

Embedded picture mnemonics: flashcard size

10 Replies

I’ve had many requests for a flashcard-sized version of our Embedded Picture Mnemonics, so (finally, sorry, I was moving house) here they are.

Embedded picture mnemonics are drawings of letters embedded in a picture of something with a name that contains that sound. The classic example is a snake in the shape of a letter S.

Mentally linking two abstract concepts (a speech sound and its letter/spelling) to the point where one automatically evokes the other is hard work, and typically requires hundreds of repetitions. Continue reading →