New Phonics With Feeling books and author interview
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Set Three of the download-and-print Phonics With Feeling Extended Code readers are now available from the Spelfabet shop.
These books provide lots of reading practice of words with single-letter ‘long’ vowel sounds, as in ‘apron’, ‘being’, ‘final’, ‘open’ and ‘using’.
Many of these are suffixed forms of the ‘split vowel’/’silent final e’ spellings in Set Two e.g. make-making, Swede-Swedish, ice–icy, hope-hoped, cute-cutest. Word lists at the start of each book make this explicit.
The ‘c’ as in ‘ice’ and ‘g’ as in ‘age’ spellings, which often occur with these spellings, are practised in the Extended Code Set One books.
The Set Three books also include the ‘short’ vowel sounds, as in ‘at’, ‘red’, ‘in’, ‘on’ and ‘up’. When tackling new words, children should be encouraged to try both sounds for a vowel letter, if the first sound they try doesn’t produce a word that makes sense. This requires phoneme manipulation skills, and the knowledge that a spelling can represent more than one sound.
Like the other Phonics With Feeling books, the Set Three books have a print-5-copies version (parent/aide) for 40c per print, and a bulk print-30-copies version (teacher/clinician) for 20c per print. Our free quizzes (downloadable or on Wordwall) have been updated to include Set Three.
Teresa Dovey (pen name Gaia Dovey, as that’s what her grandkids call her) is the author of the Phonics With Feeling decodable readers. Here’s a 15-minute interview in which she discusses why she started writing the books, why they’re called Phonics With Feeling, her academic background in English Literature, what the books are like, who they’re for, how they can be used, and some of the feedback she’s received on them.
We hope these books make decodable text interesting and enjoyable for children, and affordable for adults, and that they help kids learn to decode as well as Teresa’s grandkids, so they can go on to enjoy reading whatever they choose.
If you’ve tried the books, please share any comments or feedback you have below.
3 responses to “New Phonics With Feeling books and author interview”
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The Spelfabet shop has affordable, downloadable spelling teaching resources.
I bought the complete set in August 2020 to use in my private tutoring business. I find their longer length much more useful than the usual short ones available on the market, and agree that the stories provide better opportunities for interesting, extended discussions. My Year 3 students in particular, derive great benefit from the repetition of the spelling patterns found in the Sets 7 and 8 – and also really appreciate reading texts that aren’t ‘babyish’.
Thanks for the lovely feedback! Will pass it on to Teresa. Alison
Hi Alison,
Thank you very much for your blogs and the inclusion of the Theresa Dovey Decodables on your Spelfabet site. I am having great success using the books with my handful of students.. These little ‘page turners’ have been very well illustrated as well. Discussions are always lively after the easily decodable text is read. Students handle the new vocabulary (often polysyllabic) well and incorporate it into their written expression.
After reading Set 1 ‘Up the Wall’, my grandson spent the next hour walking around the house thinking up ridiculous ways of using the word ‘literally’. He will never use that word incorrectly again. What a blessing! Ha!
We are all hanging out for the publication of Set 9 – 11.
Thanks again for the quizzes that accompany each book and please send our gratitude to Theresa Dovey for having written these gems.
Kind regards,
Narelle Aue