Spelfabet

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

Christmas writing

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Little kids (and quite a few bigger ones) are often keen at this time of year to write Christmas lists, letters to Santa, cards or do other seasonally-adjusted writing.

They are often less enthusiastic about continuing to do structured spelling work.

It’s the silly season, so fair enough. It’s great to find a writing task they’re still keen to do, in between all their parties, concerts and swimming.

I often give up on the structured spelling work at this point of the year and just go with the silly season writing, aiming to give kids enough guidance for them to sound out all the words they want to write, while making sure I prevent spelling mistakes.

The first encounter with a written word matters, and spelling it correctly maximises your chances of getting it right again next time.

There’s no need to give up on sounding out words for this activity, and revert to visual copying or reciting letter names.

Instead, you can give kids the spellings they need for any words they can’t spell independently, and ask them to build these words before writing them. (more…)

What’s the difference between short and long vowels?

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Phonics teaching materials often talk about "short" and "long" vowels, as though the latter are just extended versions of the former.

The five vowels usually called "short" are:

  • "a" as in "cat",
  • "e" as in "red",
  • "i" as in "sit",
  • "o" as in "not",
  • "u" as in "bus".

The five vowels usually called "long", and which children are told "say their (letter) name", are:

  • "a" as in "paper",
  • "e" as in "be",
  • "i" as in "find",
  • "o" as in "go",
  • "u" as in "human".

But are we talking about sounds here, or particular spellings of these sounds?

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Spelling list signal to noise ratios

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I’m tearing my hair out again about the spelling lists some of my students are being asked to learn for spelling tests.

They’re all noise and no signal.

A spelling list should help students learn something about spelling. They should demonstrate a clear pattern students can apply to their reading and writing.

Because teachers are not usually taught much about spelling, the main message their spelling lists often send to students is that spelling is very difficult.

I wish teachers designing spelling lists would identify a single, clear spelling signal for each list, and then choose words which focus their students’ attention on this signal, and minimise background noise.

Example spelling lists

For young children, such a list might go like this: quads, squad, swamp, swan, swap, swat, wand, want, was, wasp, wash, watch.

This list makes the spelling point that after the sound “w”, the sound “o” (as in “got”) is spelt with a letter A.

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The Great Australian Spelling Bee

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There was an interesting interview on Radio National about spelling today, inspired by new TV quiz sensation the Great Australian Spelling Bee.

In the GASB (as I’m sure we’ll all soon be calling it), children aged 8 to 13 start off spelling words like “lousy”, “voyage”, “kelpie” and “gravel”, which get progressively harder, till the live audience goes mad ape bonkers at their brilliance, they can spell cretaceous! OMG.

the Great Australian Spelling Bee

GASB has tension-building music, a “Spelling Gate”, timers, a leader-board, Challenges, a Pronouncer/Judge who leaves long, hold-your-breath pauses before intoning “CORRECT” or “INCORRECT”, dinosaurs, tasers, hugging, tears, you name it, and of course lots of interviews with adorable, clever children with butterflies in their tummies, who while being fiercely competitive wish each other the best of luck and want to be friends forever. Everyone simply loves it.

I’ve only been able to watch it from between my fingers, because I find game shows excruciating (sadly I’m more of a Radio National type), and because I suspect the extreme excitement about children being able to spell might be partly because children, or people generally, who can spell really well are the exception, not the rule. It’s (IMHO) unarguably the most undervalued and poorly taught key skill on the curriculum, and has been for a long time.

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Attention during learning

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A child I’ve been working with has just started reading and spelling four-sound words.

He can read them with and without consonant digraphs (e.g. “shops”, “chimp”, “held” and “ducks”) in games and single word activities.

He can write them slowly but accurately in single word activities.

However, when I asked him to read them in an illustrated decodable storybook recently, his reading accuracy went through the floor.

His eyes kept flicking back and forth between the pictures and the words, instead of focussing on the words, and he was clearly guessing lots of words from pictures, first letters and/or context, rather than sounding them out. For example, he read “a bunch of grubs” as “some worms”.

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100 word spelling test

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I put some pseudoword spelling tests up on my website ages ago, hoping they would help people work out which of my workbooks and other materials might best meet their needs.

What is a pseudoword?

A pseudoword is a potential word in a given language, as it has allowable sound and spelling combinations, for example, "flernish" is an English pseudoword, but "wstoepfteg" is not. It doesn't sound or look remotely English.

Pseudowords are great for testing encoding skills/spelling, because they eliminate the possibility that the test words have been memorised as wholes, and require learners to sound out (i.e. use their phonemic awareness and knowledge of phoneme-grapheme correspondences) to spell all the words.

For young children and older ones who haven't been able to build their vocabularies through reading, most of the words in English are pseudowords. In fact, none of us know every word in the language – think of how many words are allowed in Scrabble that you've never heard of. So learners are not phased by being asked to write pseudowords. From their perspective, they have to do it all the time. When you google pseudowords, you find that most of them really do mean something to someone, somewhere. "Google", "blog" and the ubiquitous "selfie" were all pseudowords not long ago.

An abbreviated, 100 word spelling test

I haven't had much feedback about the spelling tests currently on my website, so I don't think they are being used much. Perhaps this is because they are far too long (I don't even use them in full these days) and in video form, requiring internet access. It's not easy to print them off and only use parts of them, or control the rate of presentation of words.

Below is an abbreviated, 100 word spelling test (or the printable version can be downloaded here) – on which I'd love your feedback.

There are no norms for this test, it's just intended as a tool to explore what a learner does and doesn't know about spelling. I usually try a two or three words from each section and then if it's clearly too easy, skip up to the next section, till I find a group of words that contain spellings which are clearly too difficult.

Before we do this test, I usually tell kids that I'm going to ask them to write some alien names and words from an alien language written in English. Sometimes I draw a few aliens – four eyes, six tentacles, some slime etc, and since my drawing skills are atrocious, kids laugh, which helps make the task seem less formal and stressful. Then off we go. No need for special equipment or expensive test forms, just pencils and paper, plus a way to block the view of other people's work for anyone inclined to copy.

Three-sound words

I start with just one letter = one sound in three-sound words (CVCs or Consonant-Vowel-Consonant words):

1. pab
2. jeg
3. kib
4. cag
5. fom
6. zun
7. vit
8. sen
9. hod
10. wup
11. yim
12. rab
13. lud
 
If a child can't do these, and is going to use the Spelfabet workbooks, they should start at the beginning of workbook 1.
 
If they can spell the above words, try these words with consonant digraphs:
 
14. kesh
15. cham
16. coth or maybe koth
17. fung or perhaps phung
18. jeck
19. riss
20. zoll

Four sound words

If they can't do these, start from p 25 in Workbook 1. But if they can do all these, then try these words with CVCC word structure:
 
21. halch
22. weps
23. yolve
24. rilm
25. vulk
26. renk
27. zant
28. wust
29. lomp
30. yuft
31. rax, as in "I bought at new rax" (they should not write "racks", as this is a singular noun not a plural or 3rd person verb, as in "sacks").
 
Kids who can't do these should start at the beginning of workbook 2. If they can do these, try some past tense words:
 
32. These aliens like to vick. Have you ever vicked before? Vicked (rhymes with ticked)
33. On Fridays they like to yeg. They have yegged every Friday for 2 years. Yegged.
34. They also like gopping so they gopped along the street. Gopped.
 
If these words cause a problem, start at page 31 in workbook 2. But if the above past tense words are written correctly, try some CCVCs:
 
35. bram
36. plock
37. tweb
38. drung
39. crig
40. glat
41. quep
42. stish
43. snod
44. swun

If these are a problem, try Workbook 3. But if they can spell CCVCs, try some "long" vowel spellings in both open and closed syllables.

Vowel spellings

The possible correct answers multiply here because each sound has several spellings:

45. prave (as in save) or praive (as in waive)
46. chay (as in day) or chey (as in they)
47. zite (as in bite) or zyte (as in byte) or zight (as in fight)
48. ji (as in hi) or jy (as in my) or jie (as in pie) or jigh (as in high) or jye (as in bye)
49. spode (as in node) or spoad (as in toad) or spowed (as in showed)
50. trow (as in slow) or troe (as in toe) or tro (as in fro)
51. froo (as in moo) or frew (as in chew) or frue (as in blue)
52. woon (as in hoon) or wune (as in June) or wewn (as in strewn)
53. thewt (as in newt) or thute (as in cute)
54. sheeb (as in dweeb) or sheab (as in reap) or shebe (as in grebe) or perhaps shieb (as in chief)
55. dwee (as in free) or dwe (as in we) or perhaps dwea (as in sea) or even duee (as in duane)
56. Someone got graked (as in faked) or graiked (as in grained)
57. Someone got trimed (as in timed) or trymed (as in rhymed)
58. Someone got choned (as in throned) or choaned (as in moaned)
59. Someone got prooped (as in drooped) or pruped (as in duped) or perhaps prouped (as in souped-up)
60. Someone got treeced (as in fleeced) or treased (as in creased) or treaced (as in peaced)
 
Problems here suggest that work is needed on the patterns in Workbook 4. But if these are mostly in the ballpark, other vowels might be the problem, as in:
 
61. clarp (as in tarp)
62. quer (as in her) or quir (as in stir) or querr (as in err) or quirr (as in whirr)
63. plaw (as in claw) or plore (as in more) or plor (as in for) or ploor (as in poor) or ploar (as in roar) or plaur (as in dinosaur)
64. prall (as in fall) or prawl (as in crawl) or praul (as in Paul) or maybe prorl (as in whorl)
65. jow (as in cow) or maybe jowe (as in Lord Howe Island)
66. glound (as in ground) or glowned (as in clowned)
67. proy (as in boy)
68. sploil (as in boil)
69. zair (as in hair) or zare (as in care)
70. slear (as in hear) or sleer (as in beer) or slier (as in tier) or slere (as in here)
 
If these are the problem, these patterns are tackled in Workbook 5. If not, try:
 
71. jance (as in dance)
72. twerse (as in verse) or twirse (as in twirl) or twurse (as in purse)
73. vause (as in pause) or vauze (as in gauze) or maybe vawse (as in hawse, a part of the bow of a ship)
74. glonze (as in bronze) or glonse (as in flense)
75. zounge (as in lounge)
76. boothe (as in smoothe) or maybe buthe or bewthe (but I can't think of any similar words)
 
These final consonant spellings are tackled in Workbook 6, along with a lot of homophones and spelling overlaps.

Multisyllable words

If your learner can make a reasonable fist of all of the above, she or he is probably needing to mostly work on multisyllable words, which you can check with these pseudowords:
 
77. A thing that flots is a flotter
78. Let's all go glonking
79. Let's all go vuzing (as in US fuzing) or voozing (as in snoozing) or vusing (as in using)
80. Let's all go clepping or klepping (as in stepping)
81. I found two thritches (as in witches) or maybe thriches (as in riches)
82. Don't touch it, it blexes (as in flexes)
83. I found a yoaf/yofe, and then another one, so now I have two yoaves (as in loaves) or yoves (as in cloves)
84. Do you think it's getting sharter lately? Sharter.
85. That is the breenest (as in greenest) / breanest (as in cleanest) thing I ever saw in my life. Breenest or breanest
86. We have to wait for it to drappen before we pick it. Drappen (as in happen)
87. I bought a new truttle (as in bottle) or possibly truttel (as in chattel).
88. We had a squessful day (as in stressful)
89. They started to gatter him, and he didn't like being gattered (as in shattered)
90. Look at that kire (as in fire) or kyre (as in tyre) or kyer (as in dryer)
91. Look at that ture (as in cure) or kewer (as in skewer)
92. They were felling rotchy (as in blotchy) or wrotchy (as in wrong) or rhotchy (as in rhotic)
93. That's the slarchiest thing I ever heard
94. They found two medloys
95. It was very grellow (as in yellow) or maybe grelloh
96. They went frining (as in dining) or phrining or perhaps friening or phriening
97. They went frinning (as in grinning) or phrinning or perhaps frynning or phrynning
98. Nobody was drairing (as in chairing) or draring (as in caring)
99. Its zame (as in fame) or zaim (as in aim) was extraordinary, it was very zamous (as in famous) or zaimous
100. They started to dwerry (as in berry) and they dwerried for two hours.
 
These patterns and others like them are tackled in Workbook 7. A student who gets these mostly right but still makes a lot of mistakes on vowels in long words might find Workbook 8 useful.
 
I'm still trying to finish workbooks 9 and 10! One school holidays when other priorities are out of the way, it'll happen.
 
Once again, the downloadable, pdf version of this test is now in the freebies section of my website shop, click here to get it.
 
I'd love your feedback on this 100 word spelling test, so if you use it, please tell me what you think/discover, and especially anything you think could be improved.
 
P.S. On 10/6/15: Many thanks to Kristie Smith and Andrea Burt for pointing out a couple of errors in the original version, I have now fixed them.

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What are the 44 sounds of English?

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For a long time I've been looking for a good, short, video about the 44 sounds of English, in my dialect, and organised by sound class not alphabetically. I haven't been able to find one, so now I've made my own.

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