Spelfabet

Another 12 decks of vowel-focussed playing cards

Just in time for our thank-goodness-winter-is-over school holidays, here’s a dozen more vowel-sound-focussed playing card decks, including two freebies, to download and print.

These decks are a little more advanced than the previous ones available here, here and here. They reflect the teaching sequence used in the Phonic Books Talisman 1/Rescue Series and the Sounds-Write program‘s Extended Code section and books, but can be used with other synthetic phonics teaching sequences and programs.

The decks work from sound to print, and focus on the following sound-spelling relationships:

• /ay/ as in “mistake”, “contain”, “holiday”, “navy”, “obey” and “great”.
• /ee/ as in “coffee”, “disease”, “secret”, “carry”, “believe”, “protein” and “compete”.
• /oe/ as in “remote”, “roast”, “follow”, “hero” and “mangoes”.
• /er/ as in “swerve”, “circle”, “burnt”, “search” and “worth”.
• /ou/ as in “aloud” and “trowel”, and /oy/ as in “point” and “destroy”.
• /oo/ as in “smooth”, “rule”, “true”, “fluid”, “jewel” and “group”.
• /igh/ as in “delight”, “despite”, “crisis”, “apply” and “allies”.
• /or/ as in “porch”, “before” and “drawn”.
• /or/ as in “stall”, “chalk”, “brought”, “daughter”, “author” and “warm” (there were so many spellings of this sound they wouldn’t fit in a single deck).
• /air/ as in “chair”, “declare”, “bear”, “where” and “their”.
• /ar/ as in “charm”, “past”, “calm”, “heart” and “aunt”.
• One deck of high-frequency words with a mixture of the above sound-spelling relationships (not available separately, but included to bring this set up to a dozen decks).

The decks can be downloaded individually (starting from the third item here) or as a discounted bundle of 12. We suggest printing the cards on A4 200gsm cardboard, available from major stationery shops, which can be used in most printers/photocopiers.

If you plan to use the cards a lot, we suggest laminating them, though this is not essential if you’d rather not add to the planetary plastic overload. We recommend that children be encouraged to practise their scissor skills by cutting them up, rounding the corners if a more professional look is sought.

All the decks can be used for any card game requiring a standard deck of cards, from very simple games of chance like War to complex strategic ones like Mancala.  See this previous blog post for videos of other suggested games.

We hope these cards give many children many hours of well-targeted, high-intensity repeated reading practice, cleverly disguised as fun. Thanks once again to Caitlin Stephenson for the original idea and design.