Spelfabet

Revised Affixit 20 game

As soon as you finish making something, you think of ways to improve it. Always. Sigh.

Affixit game 20 was meant to focus on building words like music-musician, magic-magician, and Egypt-Egyptian, but there weren’t enough suitable words, so -al/-ial as in centre-central, deny-denial, finance-financial became the focus. While making the label for our Affixit games storage boxes (download it free here if you like), I realised -al/-ial was already in Affixit game 17. Gah.

This meant I had to make a new Affixit game 20, which teaches how words ending in ‘mit’ change to ‘miss’ (as in admit-admission, permit-permissible, submit-submissive) before some suffixes (Latin ones). The wonderful Saoirse helped me make a video to demonstrate the new game:

You can download this new game free here.

I’m now stopping myself from thinking about ways to improve the Affixit games so I can focus on revising our phonics playing cards (more compact sets with larger font, words facing one way, difficult words replaced, and extra game instructions). Always ways to improve…

Alison Clarke

Speech Pathologist

Free Affixit game

Hooray, you can now download and print Game 1 of our new Affixit word-building games for $0. Players build and spell words by adding suffixes -s, -ed or -ing to base words, doubling final consonants when necessary (e.g. stop-stopped), and knowing when not to double (e.g. mend-mending, back-backs).

Base words are spelt in basic/initial code – the alphabet plus ff, ll, sh, ch, th, ng and ck – and are CVC, CCVC or CVCC words, with one CCCVC word (‘strum’). Many common one-syllable verbs like ‘win’, ‘swim’ and ‘bend’ have irregular past forms, so don’t take suffix -ed, and these were excluded. We don’t want to confuse kids with language delay/disorder who still sometimes say things like ‘swimmed’ and ‘runned’.

Game 1 targets the suffixes and juncture changes taught in Foundation Term 4 of my state’s Phonics Plus teaching sequence. Our Term 4 starts today, so I hope this game is well-timed and widely used. It should also slot neatly into other phonics teaching sequences, towards the end of the basic/initial code.

Here’s a video of me playing Affixit 1 with student Saoirse (thanks, Saoirse!):

Sorry about my messy handwriting, I was trying not to bump our wonky tripod (very hi-tech here, not).

There are 24 Affixit games in total, grouped in two sets. They target almost all the prefixes and suffixes in Phonics Plus (I’m still thinking about prefixes sub-, non- and mis-), and a few extras. They should be easy to slot into other phonics sequences, as base word spelling complexity increases gradually, and each game only targets a small number of affixes. The games took weeks to develop and test, aiming to maximise the number of common words players can build and spell in each game.

All the Affixit games are available in two download-and-print sets of a dozen from www.spelfabet.com.au/product-category/games/affixit. They cost two Australian dollars per game (plus GST if you’re in Australia) which is about USD$1.30. Each game prints on three sheets of A4 light card. We printed ours on photo paper, so we didn’t have to laminate them (quicker and less plastic, yay!). They fit neatly into two craft storage boxes we got from a hardware store, here’s what they look like:

I’ve put videos demonstrating each game on YouTube, just click on these links:

Affixit game 1          Affixit game 2          Affixit game 3          Affixit game 4

Affixit game 5          Affixit game 6          Affixit game 7          Affixit game 8

Affixit game 9          Affixit game 10        Affixit game 11        Affixit game 12

Affixit game 13 Affixit game 14 Affixit game 15 Affixit game 16

Affixit game 17 Affixit game 18 Affixit game 19 Affixit game 20

Affixit game 21 Affixit game 22 Affixit game 23 Affixit game 24

Georgina Ryan devised the original version of this game, with help of Elle Holloway.

Feel free to print multiple copies of any Spelfabet games purchased for your own class/students. I hope this makes them an affordable way to provide lots of well-targeted reading/spelling skills practice, cleverly disguised as fun. Please don’t share them across a school or school system. They take time and expertise to make, and their sales help pay for the Spelfabet website.

Alison Clarke

New moveable alphabet with embedded picture mnemonics, and free sound swaps

The download-and-print Spelfabet moveable alphabet and affixes now has embedded picture mnemonic tiles, and is useful for showing learners how to take words apart into sounds (phonemes), spelling patterns (graphemes) and meaningful parts (morphemes), manipulate their parts, and learn how all these parts are related.

This is the alphabet I use in my presentation for today’s free Sounds-Write symposium, hope you enjoy it.

There’s now a new n/noodles mnemonic that looks like Asian noodles (not pasta!). There are versions for Aussie, UK/formal Australian and US speakers e.g. with e/echo and o/octopus for US English, and k/kangaroo for rural Aussie kids who know more about wildlife than keys.

Just over half the tiles are designed to be double-sided so they can be flipped to show spelling variations. The set comes with 55 A4 pages of sound swaps/word chains to make, the first set of which can be downloaded free here, so you can check/try them out. Inflectional morphemes plus suffix -y (boss-bossy) and agent noun -er (swim-swimmer) are introduced early in the sound swaps.

There are embedded picture mnemonics for each phoneme except the unstressed vowel and the /zh/ in beige, vision and treasure, not needed for early word-building. These help beginners remember sound-letter relationships. As a sound for each letter is learnt, its tile is flipped over to show just the letter and (an) example word(s) illustrating how it is pronounced (but kids can and do flip it back if they forget):

The mnemonics for additional sounds are great for making it clear that our language has more sounds than letters, e.g. these consonant sounds don’t have their own letters:

Extra mnemonics for vowels also make it clear that some spellings represent more than one sound, for example:

Learners need to know that letters which follow a vowel often show us how to say it e.g. ‘back‘ versus ‘bake‘. Instead of ‘split’ vowel spellings, the set now has extra red consonant-e spellings, and the extended code sound swaps include switching between ‘short’ and ‘long’ vowels by changing word-final spellings. There are still single consonant tiles with doubled consonants on the flip side e.g ‘t’ with ‘tt’ on the flip side, making it easy to show that ‘cut’ gains an extra ‘t’ letter (but not an extra sound) when a vowel suffix makes it into ‘cutter’ (not ‘cuter’, which is formed by building c+u+te and then knocking off the ‘e’ with the vowel suffix, making relevant ‘kapow’ noises).

The same traffic-light based colour coding (green = start/word beginnings, orange = caution, red = stop/word endings) for graphemes. Yellow spellings are used either side of a vowel. The set has pink prefixes and blue suffixes, and includes all the high-utility affixes in this Lane et al (2019) research. There are little chameleons on assimilated prefixes, to show that their last sound and/or letter often changes to better match what follows (e.g. in + mature = immature, con + relate = correlate). Colour coding lets you help kids narrow down their visual search for a tile, as you can say e.g. ‘use a red one’ or ‘use an orange one’.

There are now twelve pages of tiles to print, grouped from basic to advanced, so they can be assembled in stages, and you don’t get scissor-and-glue-gun RSI. If you don’t need magnetic tiles for a whiteboard, just print the first eight pages double-sided, the rest single-sided, laminate and cut them up for use on a tabletop. Easy peasy. Otherwise, assemble them with magnets (instructions are included) and display them in groups on a whiteboard like this, with duplicate tiles stacked to reduce visual clutter:

Only download and print the version most suitable for the English your learners speak, but if you want to mix and match them or use a mnemonic from an earlier set (e.g. if you prefer g/girl to g/goose or y/yoga to y/yawn), you can get the picture files and print your own extra tiles. If you want a version created for the English you speak (NZ? Canada? India? elsewhere?), let me know what it is and what you suggest adding/changing/removing.

A while ago I was working with a student with a flair for chemistry who called this product ‘the periodic table of spelling’. I hope you agree that it now demonstrates all the main elements (spellements?).

P.S I’m still updating the other embedded picture mnemonic products with the new ‘n/noodles’, and we’ll shortly be releasing new Syl-lab-it card games targeting polysyllable words, cleverly designed by our gamification (5 syllables, is that a Thing?) whiz, Elle Holloway, and often requested by kids we see. Stay tuned!

Alison Clarke

PS² The Spelfabet Embedded Picture Mnemonic pictures are drawn by and © Cat MacInnes.
 

Free Flex-It game, holiday assessments and spelling boosters

It’s the last week before our school holidays, a good time to play educational games, so I’ve just put a free sample Flex-It game in the Spelfabet shop.

Download and print it on 3 sheets of light card, laminate it if you like, and cut it up. Use it to explicitly teach learners to approach the letter ‘a’ flexibly in words of more than one syllable, trying the sound in ‘apron’ if the sound in ‘apple’ doesn’t yield a real word. The ability to think flexibly and try other plausible sounds is essential for successfully sounding out long words.

Hope you and your learners like it!

(The next part of this blog post is only relevant to people in Victoria, Australia)

Holiday assessments

The Spelfabet Speech Pathologists in North Fitzroy have some availability to do speech and language assessments in the school holidays, if you need a report to accompany a funding application, or are just concerned that a child might have listening/speaking difficulties. We can also screen a child’s hearing using the Sound Scouts app, and assess phonological processing and word-level reading/spelling skills.

We know there can be a long wait for school-based Speech Pathology services, and that many applications for extra support at school are due soon. Assessment cost depends on session length, but reflects the NDIS rate for therapists. Private health insurance rebates may apply, or GPs may provide Medicare Care Plans. Click here to make a referral.

Spelling boosters

It’s hard to enjoy writing when you’re struggling with spelling. Also in the school holidays, we’re offering a small number of three-hour individualised spelling booster sessions, to clear up misconceptions about spelling evident from writing samples and/or standardised tests, build spelling skills and confidence, play some games and have some fun. The cost is $650 including a report. Again, rebates may apply if you have health insurance or a Medicare Care Plan. Click here to make a referral.

That’s it! I’m learning to write short blog posts! Happy holidays!

Alison Clarke, Speech Pathologist

New Flex-It games

Introducing our new, affordable, download-and-print set of games for explicitly teaching and practising Set for Variability skills: Flex It. There are 15 games so far, but more to come soon:

Dr Marnie Ginsberg of Reading Simplified gives a great explanation of the importance of Set for Variability in reading here, including references, or you can listen to her on the Triple R Teaching podcast. So here’s a quick version, please see hers for more details (and yes, I’ve sent Marnie the games and she’s happy to share the term ‘Flex-it’).

Many letters/spellings can represent more than one sound, e.g. the:

• ‘a’ in ‘atom’ and ‘apron’,
• ‘e’ in ‘even’ and ‘ever’,
• ‘i’ in ‘item’ and ‘index’,
• ‘ow’ in ‘show’ and ‘shower’,
• ‘g’ in ‘goblin’ and ‘giant’.

Kids thus often include an incorrect but plausible sound in a word when they sound it out. They say things like ‘joblin’ for ‘goblin’ and ‘eever’ for ‘ever’. Kids with strong Set for Variability skills can often then correct themselves, and get the word right. Other learners need to be explicitly taught how to do this.

Our “Flex It” games contain words with a shared spelling that represents two sounds (or three in the case of the o/solve, o/stove, o/some game). Most words on the cards contain two syllables. For example, here are some of the cards for the a/atom, a/apron game:

Here’s how to play Flex-It, this time with the o/often, o/open cards:

You can get the games now from the Spelfabet shop. Download and print each game on three A4 sheets of light cardboard, laminate, cut cards up or ask some helpful older students who’ve finished their work to show off their scissor skills. Repurpose vegetable-bunch elastic bands to hold each deck together for extra good karma.

Show learners the words on the cards and remind them that they’ve learnt that (whatever) letter/spelling can represent both (whatever) sound and (whatever other) sound. Model trying both sounds in a few less-common words in the deck e.g. ‘fragrant’ and ‘flagon’, putting any unfamiliar words in sentences, and maybe showing them a picture (hooray for instant internet pictures of flagons etc.)

Shuffle your deck and deal 5 cards to each player, put the rest face down in the middle, turn over the top card and take turns to play cards with the same colour or symbol, or a ‘change’ card, until someone wins by running out of cards. Learners must read the word on each card as they play it. If a learner mispronounces the target sound in a word, ask them to try the other sound. Just tell them the sound if it’s slipped their mind. Provide lots of specific praise when learners correct their mispronunciations.

Thanks to Elle Holloway for the idea, and setting up the template, so I could just nerd on the words.

Myself and other Spelfabet staff will have a table at the SOTLA event with Emily Hanford in Melbourne this Saturday (squee, when we’re not lining up for a selfie with Emily), if anyone there wants to try out these games.

Hope they help lots of kids to tackle reading words flexibly and successfully.

Alison Clarke

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

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.

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.

The similar-looking word test

Clients who seem to read well, but spell poorly, are often referred to our service.

Their word-level reading is rarely as good as it seems. While they’re reading connected text, they’re relying on their oral language skills to help them identify the words. Take the supporting context away, by asking them to read lists of words, and they’re usually much less accurate. Their pseudoword decoding/word attack is also often quite weak.