Spelfabet

Learning the building blocks of words - sounds, their spellings, and word parts

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12 thoughts on “Teachers”

  2. Lucy Bronwin

    Dear Alison,
    I am a specialist dyslexia teacher/assessor in Wales with a passion for teaching the skills that underpin skilful reading and spelling – and sharing/lending a feast of children’s books that evoke curiosity, empathy, delight and inspiration…. . … I work with individual children and over the years have nudged younger and younger… (from 14 years in secondary school to a few years with children 7-11 and since last year, reaching out to develop a service to 5 and 6 year olds and their teachers, classmates and parents…..(like a residency in effect, e.g. offering sessions to each individual child in a whole class, and then support to whoever is keen and responsive, as much as I can in the perameters of an extended school day! I would love the whole array of your resources…. to model their use and share them with teachers so then perhaps the schools might choose to invest in them too as whole class sets. As I am self-funding I will download the smaller size sets for my own teaching use, but show them to teachers and to the head, so they can experience them too….. I have an exciting thought for you too…. about a wonderful resource that went out of print a few years ago, because the one person whose business it was got arthritis – but didn’t see the business…. and her resources are brilliant….. Swap and Fix GAMZ. Mine are like gold dust. Also, I love to use the smart kids 44 sounds chart which underpins all my teaching and decoding/spelling support, in combination with Wordshark, which I love as a teaching and learning tool, and which we are developing as a whole school tool…. using the online version. Always heartened to read your posts etc. And am fascinating by early language development, and supporting children, teaching colleagues and parents to understand how it all works….. any resources that do that skilfully are very welcome!!!!! with all good wishes, Lucy

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    1. alison Post author

      Hi Lucy, Good on you, it sounds like you’re making a difference for many kids in Wales. Please if you are planning to get any of my resources just be aware that accent matters, and I’m pretty sure my accent is quite different from your students’ accents, so you might like to choose resources created closer to home. I haven’t heard of the Swap and Fix Gamz but will google them now. All the best, Alison

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  3. Lucy Bronwin

    I am particularly interested in how to support teachers with how to develop a whole school approach to handwriting that is based in this approach….. I have developed my own way of doing this, working one to one, but the schools want to develop a whole school approach… and at the moment their handwriting policy and resources are not related integrally to teaching of spelling/orthography/ or even to foundation principles of Write Dance.. so I would like be able to signpost them to effective whole school modelling which would give them a secure approach that would withstand inspection (next term!)
    .

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    1. alison Post author

      Wouldn’t that be great!?!? Handwriting is an even more widely neglected subject than spelling. Unfortunately Occupational Therapists who are handwriting experts are as rare as hens’ teeth, I’d love to employ one and integrate their knowledge into the work we do at Spelfabet with struggling readers/spellers. There are some useful fact sheets on our local children’s hospital website, see http://www.rch.org.au/ot/information_sheets/Kids_health_information. Maybe they are of use? Alison

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  4. Shipley Salewski

    Dear Alison,
    I am using Spelfabet at home with both of my children, who are enjoying the process and improving their skills. Thank you for this extraordinary trove of resources. I am wondering whether you plan to offer prefixes to accompany the suffixes you already offer. We are finding the work with inflectional endings and suffixes to be quite important — and also fun we we talk about morphology. Thank you!
    Shipley

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    1. alison Post author

      Hi Shipley, great to hear your children are improving their skills. I am working on morphology-based lists and then I hope to make further resources incorporating a morphology focus. All the best, Alison

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  5. Rachel

    Hi Alison
    My son is making great gains working with one of you speech therapists. I am a graduate teacher in year 3/4. A big problem I’ve identified in my classroom is poor spelling. I’m wanting to address this but not sure where to start. Could you point me in the direction of some resources/readings that could help me map out some sort plan on what to teach and how I might teach it.

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    1. alison Post author

      Hi Rachel, great to hear your son is doing well. I’m not really sure where to start re helping you with improving your students’ spelling, maybe we can discuss next time you’re in, if I’m not with a client? Or maybe discuss by phone? Can you talk to our reception about a time for this? Alison

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  6. Libby

    Hi Alison,
    I am a learning support teacher and was wondering if you could recommend wall cards with sounds and corresponding mouth positions? I have a student who is struggling with the placement of her mouth and tongue for particular sounds.
    Many thanks,
    Libby

    Reply ↓

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