This archive of blog posts is organised from newest to oldest in the following categories:
- Teaching ideas
- Resource reviews (including information about resources available from this website)
- Theoretical stuff
- Training
- Miscellaneous
1. Teaching ideas
- Does this child need formal assessment?
- What do kids’ names teach them about spelling?
- “Can I halp you?” The Salary-Celery merger (and using a ‘spelling voice’)
- The similar-looking word test
- What sounds did you say (not just hear) in that word?
- Context can reduce accurate word learning
- Should we do phoneme awareness activities without letters?
- What helps kids read and spell multisyllable words?
- “These are just books kids can read!”
- A phoneme is like a dog
- The sweaty sounding-out stage builds reading muscle
- Top 10 online PA/phonics resources/activities
- Don’t waste school PA time on syllables and rhyme
- Phonics and morphology go together
- Teaching vowel spellings with a moveable alphabet
- Marketing Reading Science
- When digraphs ain’t digraphs
- Articulatory awareness and modelling a “spelling voice”
- Running Records are an uninformative waste of time
- Shallow and deep phonics
- Fact and fiction with Mem Fox.
- THIS is a BORING book!
- Decodable texts and lesson-to-text match.
- Nobody advocates phonics-only instruction.
- It’s not a spelling test, it’s a quiz.
- Write this word backwards
- Alternative facts about phonics (review of e-book “Reading the Evidence: Synthetic Phonics and Literacy Learning”
- New phonics test will help teachers see who’s guessing, not decoding
- Balanced literacy: phonics lipstick is not enough
- Questions about the ALEA/PETAA infomercial on the Year 1 Phonics test
- The UK Phonics Check could help reduce teacher workloads
- Ruth Miskin’s top tips for parents
- Filling the gaps in teacher knowledge and skills
- Multi-cueing: teaching the habits of poor readers
- Dissing, choosing and teaching sight words
- I haven’t got my glasses: the adult literacy challenge
- Levelled books for guided reading (what’s wrong with them, and a better option)
- Sorry, all children deserve the gold standard
- Seven things to consider before you buy into phonics programs
- Helping teenagers with literacy
- Programs for children with learning difficulties
- Reorganising high-frequency word lists
- Spelling list signal to noise ratios
- Predictable or repetitive texts
- Sight words
- Attention during learning
- Helping children hear sound differences
- C that sounds like “s” (video about explaining the C in cell, city and cycle to kids)
- One teacher’s early literacy epiphany (an experienced teacher talks about trying both Balanced Literacy and explicit synthetic phonics)
- Dr Louisa Moats: We need to be outraged (about the remarkable persistence of bad ideas, like the “three-cueing system”, in education)
- Echo Reading (not really reading at all)
- Free synthetic phonics training on YouTube (video of a Get Reading Right webinar now on YouTube)
- Teaching vowel spellings (video of student using Spelfabet Workbook 4, and sorting words with a common sound by spelling pattern)
- Speak like the Queen when spelling long words
- Make them laugh and let them win (tips for parents whose children don’t want to work)
- Books need to make sense (fleshing out the meaning of decodable books)
- Phonics crosswords (make your own)
- Spelling plurals
- Open and closed syllables
- The spelling ough (represents eight different sounds or sound combinations)
- Have a go spelling (can lead to lots of practice of mistakes)
- Handwriting (I like simple letter shapes without to many curly bits)
- The 100 most annoying words (high-frequency words)
- Spelling Latin endings (-tion, -sia, -cient, ssion, ture, sure and more)
- When to use c or k
- A and U vowel contrasts (list of simple words which differ only by “short” vowels “a” and “u”)
- Renaming letters (letter names help us talk about letters, but not use them to read or spell)
- Balanced literacy (and why it should be called “literacy chaos”)
- Helping dyslexic students (interview with Diana Hanbury King)
- Learning vocabulary (parent cheat sheets for the Spelfabet workbooks)
- Budget beginner phonics
- Just Right Books
- Underlining Spellings
- Learning the alphabet (differentiating letter names from sounds)
- Spelling for kids (a 10-point outline of English spelling)
- Literacy groups (holiday groups, which I could run in future if there is demand)
- Creative writing
- Teach Your Baby To Read
- Myths about phonics (video of a talk by Elizabeth Nonweiler from the UK Reading Reform Foundation Conference 2011)
- Books to avoid (early literacy books on carousels in places like the post office and newsagents tend to be dross)
- What is Synthetic Phonics?
- Multisyllable words
- Specific praise
- Reading Success (includes 7 minute video of a child putting the lie to “decodable books are boring” by enjoying reading one of the ABR decodable books)
- Grouping by ability (includes 2 minute video by UK synthetic phonics expert Ruth Miskin recommending multi-age literacy groups)
- Crisp consonants and Crisp Consonants 2 (how to say individual sounds)
- Rude words (why sometimes they might be included in spelling activities for older, disgruntled learners)
- Getting kids’ cooperation (using tactics from the book How To Talk So Kids Will Listen, And Listen So Kids Will Talk)
- Spelling for footy nuts
- Single sounds, not larger chunks
- Word sequences
- Response To Intervention (a three-tiered approach to preventing literacy failure I’d like to see implemented in all primary schools)
- Teach 100 first spellings, not 100 first words
- Doing dictation doesn’t make you a dictator
- The unstressed vowel (used in weak syllables)
- Consonant syllables (most but not all syllables contain a vowel)
- Double consonants (video clip demonstrating why/where we usually double consonants)
- Silent letters (all the letters in a word are there for a reason)
- Spelling mistakes (why not to use ‘Which Spelling Is Correct?’ activities)
- Prefixes and suffixes
- Phonic Games (things to look for and avoid when choosing software)
- Counting syllables
- Reading for Parents (booklet for parents called Reading: Breaking Through the Barriers)
- Vowels and Consonants (there are more than 5 of the first and 21 of the second, and the boundary between the two categories is fairly blurry)
- Food coops and chicken coops
- Spelling word attack
- Let’s not sing our ABCs (the case against teaching letter names early)
- Can teaching be toxic?
- Beware phonics amateurs
- Teach one-syllable words first (once you know the vowel spellings in little words, this helps you tackle the unstressed vowel in longer words)
- Elkonin boxes
- A and the (two little words that can really throw spanners in beginners’ sound-letter learning works)
- Consonant clusters
- Nonsense words (why they are very useful in assessment of word attack)
- Irregular words? (there aren’t that many of them, and they’re not as irregular as many people think)
- Teaching sight words
- Learning literacy is like learning to drive
- Syllable chunking
- Do we need spelling reform?
- Spelling list words (should make a point about spelling)
- Sounds and letters (what the sounds of English are, and how each is produced and spelt)
- Spelling rules (why I don’t find them helpful)
- Be a spelling organiser
- Spelling lists should make a point about spelling
2. Resource reviews
- Benchmark Assessment: Often Wrong
- The Australian Curriculum Version 9.0
- The Education Research Reading Room podcast
- New year, same crappy old Education Department advice
- THRASS: the phonics of Whole Language
- The Phonics Patch on ABC iView
- ABC iView Learn A Word
- Is Reading Eggs all it’s cracked up to be? (boom-tish)
- Reading Eggs – Fast Phonics
- Arrowsmith: the triumph of marketing over science
- Top early literacy apps 2020
- Ros Neilson on the Foundations of Early Literacy Assessment
- MSL Club 2018
- Making sense of treatment choices for children with developmental disorders: A guide for parents and professionals
- Pip and Tim decodable books from Little Learners Love Literacy
- Arrowsmith
- Is the new Victorian learning difficulties screening assessment any good?
- Alison Lawson clinics
- Phonics and Early Reading Assessment (PERA)
- Sound Out Chapter Books
- Cheap decodable books – Pocket Rockets
- Outside the Square (upcoming film about dyslexia)
- Fountas and Pinnell Leveled Literacy Intervention
- Phoneme pronunciation (excellent Get Reading Right Phoneme Pronunciation page)
- Geraldine the Giraffe learns schwa (but gets it wrong)
- Reading Bear
- Free decodable texts (from the Freereading website)
- Top Early Literacy Apps 2014 (my favourite 25 iPad apps for literacy beginners)
- Little Learners Love Literacy books (my favourite decodable books for Australian 4, 5 and 6-year-olds)
- English Isn’t Crazy! (book about the origins of English)
- Language for Learning Checklists (primary and secondary versions, free from the Oz Child website)
- Trugs (card games)
- Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons (Siegfried Engelmann/SRA/DISTAR programs and video)
- Reading Eggs – Eggy Phonics
- Oxford Owl free eBooks
- iPad spelling apps
- More free early literacy ipad apps
- Davis Dyslexia method
- Phonic Books – compare prices (note that prices and availability in this blog post may have changed)
- Magic Belt Books (decodable books for 8-14-year-old struggling and reluctant readers)
- Dyslexia Cure (responding to an article in a local paper about a new centre offering the Davis Dyslexia Method)
- Oz Phonics 3 (iPad app)
- Yes Phonics
- Milo’s Read and Grab Game
- Words Their Way
- WriteOn Phonics app (for the iPad)
- Sound Literacy app (for the iPad)
- Download free eBooks (how to download SA SPELD’s phonic books to an iPad)
- Lindamood_Bell Auditory Conceptualisation Test
- Phonics Hero Classroom (great iPad app for preschoolers and school beginners)
- Literacy games (what’s wrong with many commercially-available literacy games)
- Bums – a testimonial (a look at a free SPELD SA decodable book little kids think is a hoot)
- Sounds-Write books
- Clicker Phonics
- Free decodable books (from the SPELD SA website)
- Free phonological awareness test (the Rosner Test of Auditory Analysis Skills)
- Reading Recovery
- Different accents (the Oz Phonics apps have an Australian accent option)
- The National Curriculum
- Free internet literacy games
- Phonics resources (when UK schools buy approved synthetic phonics programs, the government pays half)
- Free early literay iPad apps
- Synthetic phonics
Spelfabet resources (available from this website)
- New Flex-It games
- Free & Cheap Word-building games
- New word-building videos (using the Spelfabet moveable alphabet).
- Tier 2 word structure (free list of academic words and derivations sorted by number of syllables)
- New moveable alphabet and affixes
- New Phonics With Feeling books (Set 11)
- Embedded Picture Mnemonic bookmarks and desk mats
- Embedded Picture Mnemonic picture files
- Phonics With Feeling Set 10 now available
- New printable decodable books, including an extra free one
- New 2 ways to spell vowels cards, including a free deck
- New morpheme-based spelling lists
- New decodable books for ‘o as in love’ and ‘a’ as in ‘ball’
- Affordable basic phonics kit
- New Phonics with Feeling books and author interview
- 1000 decodable quiz questions
- New printable decodables and free quizzes
- Phonics with Feeling books are now in the Spelfabet shop
- New low-frequency words spelling test (a freebie)
- New word-building sequences
- New Spelfabet workbooks and EOFY discount
- New Embedded Picture Mnemonics now available
- New things at Spelfabet
- Phonics stocking stuffer
- Half-price phonics playing cards, for social, screen-free fun
- More phonics playing cards
- New moveable alphabet word sequences
- Free download: My Reading and Word Journal (but in 2022 it’s about the price of a cup of coffee)
- Embedded Picture Mnemonics: flashcard size
- Free, downloadable phonics card game
- Another 12 decks of vowel-focussed playing cards
- New and improved phonics playing cards
- Introducing Clever Caitlin’s playing cards
- New word-building card games
- If you’re already using my free workbook, here’s the next one
- Budget Embedded Picture Mnemonics
- Free early phonemic awareness, phonics and handwriting workbook
- Phonemes are sounds AND articulatory gestures (includes videos of each phoneme)
- Free spelling lists for teachers
- Low frequency word spelling test (free download)
- New Spelfabet workbooks and other resources (from June 2017)
- New early literacy assessment service
- How literacy transforms the human brain
- 100 Pseudoword Spelling Test (free download)
- Printable wordbuilding card games
- Teaching beginning spelling (video demonstration of Spelfabet Level 1 workbook)
- Free spelling book (downloadable booklet which lets you look up any sound and find all its spellings, or look up any spelling and find all its sounds)
- Free First Phonics Picture Book (downloadable pdf from this site’s shop)
- Free synthetic phonics worksheets (sample Spelfabet workbook pages that you can download for free)
- Spelling Collection video (3 minute clip about the Spelling Collection available on this site, or you can just make your own)
- Whole kit (all the Spelfabet materials available as a single, discounted purchase)
- Spelling Collection (discussion of how I use one of the resources in this website’s shop)
- Level 8 Workbook (workbook focussing on vowel spellings in multisyllable words)
- Basic Spelling Sounds (picture book showing one main spelling for each speech sound)
- Spelling Sounds (picture book showing all the main spellings for each speech sound)
- Long vowel games
- Updated spelling tests
- Spelling games – final consonant blends
- Free spelling game
- Victorian Modern Cursive – the Spelfabet materials are available in the writing style taught in most Victorian, Western Australian and Northern Territory schools.
- How English spelling works (includes a Youtube video)
- How Phonics Got Framed (Youtube video)
- Printable phonics
- Look up spelling patterns
- Printable phonics games
- Cheap phonics alphabet
3. Theoretical stuff
- Dyslexia facts, myths and strategies
- Therapists’ duty of care means that we must recommend evidence-based teaching.
- Society for the Scientific Study of Reading: Day 1
- Society for the Scientific Study of Reading: Day 2
- Society for the Scientific Study of Reading: Day 3
- Play and language: the roots of literacy
- Why do we say the past tense suffix -ed three ways?
- Spelling for grown-ups 2: adding suffixes
- Spelling for grown-ups 1: /s/ spelt C and /j/ spelt G
- Experience the Simple View of Reading
- Four cheers for Emily Hanford
- We need good practice, not common practice
- The Language, Learning and Literacy Conference – Kathy Rastle
- The Language, Learning and Literacy Conference – Stanislas Dehaene
- The definition of decoding (or “glamping with David Hornsby”)
- A Simple View of the Phonics Debate
- Pom pom phonemes
- What is an authentic text?
- What is a decodable book?
- The nature of reading development and difficulties (about a David Kilpatrick seminar)
- Our goal is to develop phoneme proficiency in kids (about a David Kilpatrick seminar)
- Things tie together when you have a really good theory (about a David Kilpatrick seminar)
- PIRLS 2016 results
- What kind of knowledge is needed for good spelling?
- The difference between research and marketing.
- Controversial dyslexia therapies
- What’s the difference between short and long vowels?
- The categorical perception deficit in dyslexia
- How the brain learns to read (about a video by Stanislas Dehaene)
- What are the 44 sounds of English? (video)
- The difference between consonants and vowels
- What is poor phonemic awareness?
- Reading Recovery revisited
- Learning new abstract symbols is hard (demonstration by John Walker of Sounds~Write)
- What are English morphemes, and why do they matter for spelling?
- Choosing a book for your child (response to The Conversation article “Ditch the home readers – real books are better for your child)
- Evaluating Alternative Solutions for Dyslexia (talk by Professor Dorothy Bishop)
- Can children with intellectual disabilities learn to read?
- Literacy policy (response to an article in The Conversation)
- The Dyslexia Debate (new book from the UK arguing that the term “dyslexia” is poorly defined and not helpful)
- Oral language supports early literacy (Associate Professor Pam Snow talks about the OLSEL study)
- Faulty brain connections in adult dyslexia (Belgian researchers found adults with dyslexia knew their sounds, but couldn’t access them well when reading)
- How words cast their spell: Spelling is an integral part of learning the language, not a matter of memorisation (summary of and comments on an article from American Educator)
- Lost for words: why the best literacy approaches are not reaching the classroom (response to Misty Adoniou article in The Conversation)
- Teacher knowledge of phonics (Louisa Moats video and article Teaching Reading IS Rocket Science)
- Postmodern claptrap rules in schools (Alannah MacTiernan MP op ed in The Australian)
- Two Reading Cultures (The Science of Reading and Its Educational Implications, by Mark S Seidenberg)
- Teaching Spelling
- A Literacy Deficit (ABC Background Briefing program about adult illiteracy, particularly in Tasmania)
- Dyslexia Support and Intervention (video by Professor Maggie Snowling)
- Raising Awareness of Language Learning Impairment (UK Youtube Channel with lots of fabulous information about Specific Language Impairment)
- The Reading Rope (a nice analogy – skilled reading is woven from many strands)
- Reading Comprehension
- Quality literacy teaching
- MUSEC Briefings (succinct information from Macquarie University on a range of special educational topics)
- DIY disorders (such as optilexia, which I prefer to call dyspedagogia)
- Speech sound development (why we should be teaching foreign languages, not literacy, in preschool)
- Language and literacy problems in young offenders
- Edubabble (how the trees of reading and spelling seem to have been lost in a forest of new, critical, digital multiliteracies)
- Language and Literacy (spoken language is natural and written language is not)
- Correct speech (we no longer expect teachers to teach children to speak the Queen’s English, but are we thinking through the issue of dialect?)
- Reading progress – the Australian Temperament Project
- Kids get Left Right behind in our literacy debate (I don’t usually agree with Janet Albrechtson on anything, but she’s right about phonics)
- Reading to learn (the Matthew Effect)
- Progress in Reading Literacy, not (results of the international PIRLS research comparing Year 4 schoolchildren’s skills in 48 countries)
4. Training
- Workshops comparing decodable books
- Free online professional learning (2023 Sounds-Write symposium)
- Here’s the video of my LDA webinar on spelling logic (all the free LDA webinars are here)
- English spelling has five kinds of logic
- Gin and Phonics with John Walker
- Free Learning Difficulties including Dyslexia webinars
- Upcoming training in synthetic phonics (March 2016 post, but contains links to providers who may be offering more training now, and gives an indication of costs).
- Try learning a new alphabet yourself (a quick, downloadable workshop activity)
- 12 Reasons you should come to Prof Maryanne Wolf’s seminar (held September 2016, and it was great, you can still read her books and watch her on YouTube)
- Seminar on improving school outcomes (held 11/9/15 in Flemington)
- Teachers’ literacy matters, not least to them
- Closing the teacher education phonics black hole (includes video from Melbourne Sounds~Write training)
- Melbourne Sounds~Write training (19-22 January 2015)
- Positive Teaching (new training in classroom behaviour management from MultiLit)
- Free Inclusion Online Training For Teachers
- Melbourne Literacy Workshop (workshop I ran for TTR4L 2013, but I can update and run it again on request)
- Free Literacy Training (on the SA SPELD website)
- Teacher phonemic awareness
5. Miscellaneous
- 25 minutes a day so everyone can read! (on the June 2024 announcement that all Victorian schools will teach systematic synthetic phonics)
- Ten cheers for our new Children’s Laureate! (2024: Sally Rippin)
- Summer holiday groups at Spelfabet
- A Voice on First People’s literacy and more
- Why doesn’t NAPLAN start in Year 1?
- Overhaul of Initial Teacher Education
- Chances are your child’s school uses programs which lack strong evidence to support teaching: what parents should know
- Australian phonics screening and funding
- Help the government improve adult literacy
- Where is your evidence? (zombie claymation)
- Dyslexia is not a visual problem, or a gift
- January 2021 holiday groups
- Marketing reading science
- School holiday groups at Spelfabet
- Survey (with amazing prizes) of our local schools
- Have you signed the Primary Reading Pledge?
- Telling the Spelfabet story
- Why is the Vic Ed Dept promoting a Fountas and Pinnell assessment?
- 30% discount on all Spelfabet materials (at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic)
- INVESTed – amazing value conference in Gippsland
- January intensive reading/spelling groups in North Fitzroy (January 2020)
- Last chance to register for LDA’s David Kilpatrick seminars
- Petition to dump Reading Recovery and Levelled Literacy Intervention
- Now advertising: Jobs at Spelfabet in North Fitzroy
- Dyslexia Victoria Support volunteers win Premier’s award
- Dyslexie font, coloured overlays and Irlen Syndrome
- How many inquiries into literacy education do we need?
- How can I get my child’s literacy problem taken more seriously at school?
- Christmas writing
- The Great Australian Spelling Bee
- How much assessment is enough?
- Made up words in children’s books
- Brain training
- Let’s call nonsense word decoding “new word attack”
- Winter sale (all Spelfabet materials are half price from 16 June to 31 August 2014)
- Lower-order rote skills, my eye (you don’t have to emphasise the importance of reading to learn by trivialising learning to read)
- Writing is like swimming (and those of us who aren’t naturals need a lot of practice to learn them well)
- Spelfabet on Facebook
- Dr Spaceman’s Abalone Minestrone recipe (fun with spelling in TV show 30 Rock)
The Spelfabet shop has affordable, downloadable spelling teaching resources.
