Tier 2 word structure

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When teaching kids to read and spell polysyllable words, I’ve been trying to work with high-utility academic words, AKA Tier 2 Words. My main goal is to ensure learners can read and spell long words. All else being equal, they might as well practise this skill with words they can use across the curriculum.

Usually, I can’t realistically use the gold standard process outlined in the classic vocabulary selection text Bringing Words To Life for this. I only see clients once a week or fortnight, tweens and teens with learning difficulties tend not to communicate much about school topics, and their parents don’t always know what they are. Even when I do find out a school topic, prepare relevant work, and it’s time for their session, their class has often moved on.

So I tried a more generic approach: choosing words from the free grade-level Tier 2 wordlists on the Think SRSD website (thanks to its compilers, Karen Harris and colleagues at Hyde Park Central School District, and to the Think SRSD folk). However, these lists don’t sort words by number of syllables, and many words appear on more than one list. Often they are multi-morpheme words, like “endangered” (en+danger+ed), but useful base words like “danger” aren’t included, and nor are other useful derivations like “dangerous” or “endangering”.

To make the kind of list I wanted, I’ve combined the Think SRSD Tier 2 lists, deleted duplicates, sorted words alphabetically and by number of syllables, then added missing base words and extra derived forms in italics. My colleague Nicola Anglin and her parents (all excellent word nerds) made corrections and added words. We ended up with a 21-page document. Far too long to put in a blog post, but the top section is above, and you can download the whole thing as a pdf here.

If you find mistakes in the document (there are probably a few), want to suggest improvements or have other feedback, please send them in the comments.

New moveable alphabet and affixes

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After many failed attempts and two broken laminators (gah), I’ve finally created a moveable alphabet which has lots of prefixes and suffixes but still leaves space on my whiteboard to write/build words, looks good and handles well (its chunkier tiles stick with a satisfying click, and don’t fall off easily).

The set has 140 single-sided tiles and 56 double-sided tiles, representing:

  • 11 consonant spellings used before vowels, like ‘j’, ‘h’, ‘v’, ‘wh’ and ‘kn’ (these are green, like a traffic light’s ‘go’ signal),
  • 48 vowel spellings like ‘u’, ‘ai’, ‘ea’, ‘oo’, ‘ur’, ‘igh’ and ‘ough’ (orange, meaning ‘caution’, because vowels are the trickiest part of English spelling).
  • 36 consonant spellings used after vowels like ‘ck’, ‘ng’, ‘ff’, ‘ve’, ‘tch’, ‘ce’ and ‘mb’ (red, for stop and blend).
  • 23 consonant spellings which are used both before and after vowels, like ‘k’, ‘m’, ‘s’, ‘sh’ and ‘ph’ (yellow).
  • 22 prefixes (purple).
  • 50 suffixes (blue).

All tiles are now the same size, making them easier to cut up and store/carry in a toolbox, if you’re on the go. There are two or three copies of high-use tiles, so you shouldn’t run out of letters like ‘e’ or ‘n’ when building long words (spares not shown in photos above and below). Having double-sided tiles makes the set more compact, and helps establish the concept that speech sounds/affixes are often written more than one way. The photo below shows the ‘flip’ side (as the vinyl buffs say) of the double-sided tiles.

Early, low-verbiage morphology teaching

As well as using this set to build and change words using graphemes, these tiles help you show children how to add prefixes and suffixes to base words without resorting to complex ‘if-then’, ‘except-if’ type language, which young and language-disordered children find hard to understand.

For example, build the word sun, then add:

  • suffix -s, to make suns, as in ‘the lizard suns itself on a rock’ (3rd person verb) or ‘many stars are suns’ (plural).
  • suffix -‘s, to make sun’s, as in ‘the sun’s rays are bright today’ (possessive)
  • suffix -ed, to make sunned, as in ‘the snake sunned itself on that rock yesterday’ (past tense) or ‘He had sunned himself for years, so his skin was leathery’ (past participle). Kids can be told that ‘suned’ is pronounced rhyming with ‘pruned’, so when a vowel suffix is added, we flip the ‘n’ over to get ‘nn’, which keeps the /u/ sound in ‘sun’.
  • suffix -ing, to make sunning, as in ‘sunning yourself feels nice, but don’t get burnt’ (present participle). Again, flip the ‘n’ tile over to get ‘nn’.
  • suffix -y, to make sunny, as in ‘It’s a lovely, sunny day’ (again, flip the ‘n’).

Some kids get a real six-words-for-the-price-of-one buzz from this. They want to try other prefixes and suffixes, to see what other words they can make. I’ve had to ask a few of them to stop it and sit down, because we have other work to do.

This set also makes it easy to teach the concept that spellings can stay the same when sounds change during word-building e.g.

  • Build the word heave, with vowel sound /ee/ represented by ‘ea’, then add suffix -y to get heavy, with vowel sound /e/ represented by ‘ea’.
  • Build the word south and notice that the vowel sound changes, but the spelling stays the same, when we add suffix -ern to make southern.
  • Build words like act, music and discuss, and notice how their last sounds change when we add suffix -ion to get action, musician and discussion. Preserving base word spellings helps us know what the new word means.

Each tile has example words showing the different ways the spelling can be pronounced. Usually there are only one or two ways, but some spellings have small groups of unusual words (like grapheme ear: bear, pear, wear, tear, swear and heart).

Some prefixes assimilate to base words, for example ‘in’ meaning ‘not’ changes to ‘im’ when added to words starting with lip sounds, like ‘possible’ and ‘modest’. Example words on prefix tiles illustrate this.

This set doesn’t include the six ‘split vowel’ spellings in previous moveable alphabets: a…e as in ‘make’, e…e as in ‘these’, i…e as in ‘like’, o…e as in ‘hope’, u…e as in ‘cute/flute’ and y…e as in ‘type’. Their unusual shape was a bit distracting and fiddly, and they required different logic, potentially adding cognitive load.

The original sets already had several word-final consonant-e spellings: ce as in voice, ge as in large, le as in bottle, se as in house/please, ve as in give, ze as in breeze. Replacing the ‘split’ spellings with extra consonant-e spellings (be, de, fe, ke, me, ne, pe, re and te) only adds three extra graphemes, follows the same left-to-right logic of the rest of the set, and makes it easier to build common words like ‘come/some’ and ‘done/gone’. These reasons, plus ease of making/handling/storing tiles have motivated the change. Sorry about that, if you prefer ‘split’ spellings, but please listen to Episode 11 of the Sounds-Write podcast. You might also be persuaded.

If you already have a serviceable Spelfabet or other moveable alphabet, you can add the new bits of this one to it, keeping the file on your computer so you can print, assemble and use it in full once your existing set finally bites the dust.

Now I just need to revise my wordlists and sequences to match this version of the alphabet. Please bear with me while I do. If you have any feedback about this version, I’d love you to put it in the comments.

Free online professional learning

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Yikes, 6036 people have signed up for my Phonics: Speech To Print Symposium talk next week. This event is shaping up to be bigger than Ben Hur, not surprising when speakers include Pamela Snow, Greg Ashman, Mandy Nayton, Tom Bennett, Pie Corbett, John Walker and many more.

All sessions are free for 48 hours, or an all-access pass to all sessions whenever it suits you is very affordable, e.g. a whole school pass costs about AUD$225 if you sign up before 15/5/23.

The good folk of Sounds-Write have involved many other speech-to-print authors like Tricia Millar (That Reading/Spelling Thing), Marnie Ginsberg (Reading Simplified), Nora Chahbazi (EBLI), Tami Reis-Frankfort (Phonic Books), Faith Borokowski (High Five Literacy) and Ann Sullivan (Phonics for SEN). Making sure everyone can read is a team sport, and we can all learn so much from each other.

For example, Nora Chahbazi and John Walker agreed in Episode 11 of the Sounds-Write podcast that teaching consonant-e as a word-final spelling (e.g. ke in ‘take’, ‘se’ in these, ‘ne’ in line, ‘pe’ in hope, ‘te’ in cute) is probably a better idea than teaching kids about ‘split’ spellings (a…e as in ‘take’, e…e as in these etc). ‘Split’ spellings mess with straightforward left-to-right reading. Hmm.

New moveable alphabet

I’ve been working on a new moveable alphabet, adding prefixes and suffixes, and making it more compact and useful for showing (rather than telling) kids how words are built. The kids I work with can’t handle too much verbiage.

Earlier versions have consonant-e spellings: ce in ‘voice’, se in ‘house/please’, ge in ‘large’, ve in ‘have’, ze in ‘breeze’ and ‘le’ in ‘bottle’, but after listening to the above podcast I added more, and took out the ‘split’ spellings. This makes it easier to build common words like ‘done’, ‘gone’, ‘come’ and ‘some’.

There are also double-sided tiles you flip over to change y to i when ‘cry’ becomes ‘cried’, or ‘n’ to ‘nn’ when ‘run’ becomes ‘running’, etc. I’ll demonstrate this in my symposium session.

New Embedded Picture Mnemonics

We’ve also been working on, and I’ll talk at the symposium about, the Spelfabet embedded picture mnemonics. Lots of people want a picture mnemonic for every grapheme. More of a good thing is not always better. The mnemonics exist to help kids remember basic sound-letter relationships, understand that there are more sounds than letters, and teach a common spelling for each sound. This is consistent with the late, great Prof Diane McGuinness’s prototype for teaching the spelling code. She seems to have inspired the authors of many speech-to-print phonics teaching approaches.

The Spelfabet embedded picture mnemonics will soon have single-letter ‘long’ vowels: a/alien, e/evil, i/ice, o/ocean, u/unicorn. Most words in English are polysyllabic, so the one-letter spellings are generally the most common for these sounds (see this study). I hope the new mnemonics help shift people’s focus from graphemes to phonemes, and help kids realise that many sounds share a spelling (it’s not just oo/look and oo/food).

High-utility polysyllabic word list

Finally, we’ve been working on a high-utility academic (Tier 2) polysyllabic word list, which again will be available next week. When teaching kids in intervention how to read/spell polysyllable words, the aim is to prioritise words they can use across academic subjects, such as “benefit” and “argument”. Words like “flamenco” and “saxophone” aren’t quite so useful.

The list also aims to build morphological knowledge into intervention targeting polysyllable words. It contains lots of inflected and derived forms. Knowing how to turn a base word like “avoid” into “avoidant”, “avoiding”, “avoided”, “avoidable” and “unavoidable” gives a six-for-the-price-of-one frisson to learning about word structure, and makes complete sense to kids who are into Minecraft and Lego (at least half my caseload).

I’m also planning to offer a substantial Spelfabet shop discount to symposium attendees.

I hope at least some of the Phonics: Speech To Print Symposium next week is interesting/useful to you.

Alison Clarke

Speech Pathologist

New Phonics With Feeling books

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The new Extended Code Set Eleven download-and-print Phonics With Feeling readers mean there are now a dozen sets of these affordable, decodable books (one Initial Code Review set, and 11 Extended Code sets).

Set Eleven has five volumes containing 13 short stories in verse. Its focus is less common consonant spellings like the ‘kn’ in ‘know’ and the ‘ch’ in ‘chorus’, so it’s suitable for students in Year 2 or early Year 3, or slightly older catch-up learners.

It can be difficult to find text which provides plenty of practice with less common patterns, but author and illustrator Gaia (AKA Teresa, but her grandkids call her Gaia, and she created the books for them) Dovey has a knack for weaving amusing stories including lots of words with (a) specific phoneme-grapheme correspondence(s). Great for repetition to mastery!

Like all PWF sets, there’s a parent/aide version which may be printed up to five times (40c per copy), or a bulk-priced teacher/clinician version, which may be printed up to thirty times (20c per copy). They download with printable quizzes about each book, or you can use the online quizzes.

The stories are:

Triceratops Stew (250 words)

  • Revising c as in cent, introducing ce as in prince
  • In this story, the reader is encouraged to try a ridiculously impossible recipe.

The Gentle Giant (277 words)

  • Revising g as in giant, introducing ge as in change
  • This giant is gentle and kind, but small animals need to be vigilant around him.

Missy Madge (121 words)

  • Introducing dg as in budget, dge as in badge
  • Missy Madge is a brave little donkey who goes everywhere with her owner.

The Animals and the Alphabet (179 words)

  • Introducing ph as in alphabet
  • Some animals at the zoo are learning the alphabet, and others are feeling left out.

The Giraffe Who Forgot How to Laugh (151 words)

  • Introducing gh as in laugh
  • Joseph the giraffe has had a tough time in the zoo, but there is a simple way to make his life easier.

Write About Wrong (221 words)

  • Introducing wr as in wrong
  • Proteus, the protector of the sea, wants to get a message to those people who don’t care about the earth or the ocean.

The Knitting Knight (92 words)

  • Introducing kn as in knit
  • This knight seems to be pretty good at knitting, but he is taking a long time to make a scarf.

The Gnarled Old Gnome (80 words)

Introducing gn as in gnome

  • This old gnome is keen to travel, but when he visits the city, he doesn’t like it at all.

Chiara and the Cats’ Chorus (224 words)

  • Introducing ch as in chorus
  • The cats in the chorus want tiaras like Chiara’s, so she finds a way to make this possible.

Ghosts and Ghouls (93 words)

  • Introducing gh as in ghosts
  • On her brother’s advice, Sally creates a suitably ghastly costume for Hallowe’en.

Tom Crumb (125 words)

  • Introducing mb as in crumb
  • Tom does some silly things, but he also does something brave.

What About Whale? (124 words)

Revising wh as in whale

  • This little poem reminds children that there are plenty of words beginning with wh, and draws attention to the way in which many of these words are onomatopoeic.

Priscilla (348 words)

  • Introducing sc as in scissors, sce as in reminisce
  • Priscilla is interested only in herself and in the fashion scene, but she learns the hard way about collaboration.

Like the other Phonics With Feeling readers, these readers have cohesive narratives, entertaining plots, engaging characters and themes worth talking about. We hope you like them!

Where is your evidence?

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Lately I’ve been having lots of discussions about reading/spelling interventions that lack robust scientific evidence e.g. modelling words in clay. Sigh.

As Hallowe’en loomed, I needed a laugh, so I commissioned this brief video from a talented young claymation artist called Matty Mrksa:

Hope you like it! Feel free to use it as a social media comment.

New things at Spelfabet

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The COVID-19 pandemic knocked most of my plans sideways and sent me into too-tired-to-blog mode for most of the last year, but here are five new things we’ve been working on:

  • Intensive school holiday and Saturday groups for ages 6-8
  • New, improved Embedded Picture Mnemonics (Aust/UK and US versions)
  • Version 3 Spelfabet workbooks
  • Local Community of Practice (INMELLCoP)
  • Decodable text writing interface

(more…)

Phonics stocking stuffer

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It’s the first day of summer here in Melbourne, after a long, hard year of lockdown. We’ve been mostly working online since March, which was quite a learning curve, so I’ve had almost no energy for blogging or the website (sorry). We’ve now had no new COVID-19 cases for a month (hooray! it can be done!) so are cautiously looking forward to the silly season.

If you’d like a simple, inexpensive phonics game as an end-of-year school activity or Christmas stocking stuffer, you might like my new printed (no laminating or cutting up required!) word-building card game. Lots of kids didn’t learn very well this year thanks to COVID-19, but we’re all pretty weary, so it seems like a good time to build skills and knowledge through games.

Here’s a 90-second video about the game:

Children who only know one sound for each letter of the alphabet will need adult help with the sounds for the consonant digraphs and trigraphs in this game (sh, ch, th, wh, ll, ss, ck, ng, tch, dge), but children who know these spellings can play more independently.

If a child builds a word they don’t know, you might like to tell them what it means and put it in a sentence or two, to build their vocabulary, or just skip over it if it’s not a common word.

Older/more advanced learners can put up to three adjacent consonants in their first words (e.g. bench, truck, splint and strengths), which are then much harder for their opponent to change. Knowing the consonant combinations used in English syllables helps with spelling and reading.

The game – 52 child-sized cards and 2 instruction cards in a box – costs $12 including GST from our online shop, plus $9.20 for packing and postage to anywhere in Australia, or you can click-and-collect from our office in North Fitzroy. Please ring first (03 8528 0138) to make sure our reception will be staffed when you visit, and it won’t be waiting room Peak Minute.

Sorry we can’t currently ship this game overseas. The DSF online shop also sells this game, and may take overseas orders. You can also get this game from the lovely people at Childplay toy shop in Clifton Hill, where I never fail to find the best gifts for kids.

The download-and-print version of this game is also still available, either by itself or in a set of three games, but you have to provide the cardboard and colour printer, laminate it and cut it up, and the end result isn’t as robust or professional-looking.

An earlier version of this game contained spellings like ‘v’, ‘j’, ‘ff’ and ‘zz’ which aren’t in many words, so that version was a bit harder to play. These spellings have been replaced by more common ones in the new game, so it’s easier and more fun for beginners and strugglers. I’m hoping to be able to produce more printed resources in future, if these cards are a success.