Description

These .png picture files of the Spelfabet Embedded Picture mnemonics allow you to easily paste mnemonics into early literacy teaching materials you’re creating for your learners. Bookmarks, place-mats, flip-charts, slideshows, friezes, posters, games, it’s up to you.

Original and revised mnemonics for Australian/UK/NZ (non-rhotic) and American (rhotic) Englishes are included. These should cater for a wider variety of accents, locations and preferences.

After much trial, error and discussion, we’ve added the following one-letter ‘long’ vowels to the set as standard:

Since most English words have more than one syllable, these are the most common spellings for these sounds. Representing twelve sounds with six spellings (we already had oo/look, oo/food, a/apple, e/egg or echo, i/insect, o/orange or octopus, and u/up or undies) should help children understand that a letter/spelling can represent more than one sound.

We’ve also replaced g/girl with g/goose, because we don’t want to suggest that girls should have long hair and rosy cheeks, or that other children can’t/don’t have them. We’re also now using y/yawn instead of y/yoga in bookmarks, placemats etc. However, g/girl and y/yoga are still in this picture set, if you prefer them.

You don’t need a mnemonic for every grapheme (spelling of a single speech sound), just one for each phoneme (speech sound). Their purpose is to help children learn what the sounds of spoken English are (i.e. develop phonemic awareness), and learn one major spelling for each sound. After that, you shouldn’t need further mnemonics.  The mnemonics should enhance/support your systematic, explicit, synthetic phonics teaching sequence and materials in the very early stages, not replace them.

Please note that the Spelfabet Embedded Picture Mnemonics are copyright of the illustrator, Cat Macinnes. When you download the set, you agree to use them only with your own students/clients/children, and not to share them with others or use them for commercial purposes (as per the Conditions of Use included).