- \n
- an extremely comprehensive and well-organized catalogue of phonics resources<\/a><\/li>\n
- painstakingly edited spelling lists organized by sound (phoneme), spelling (grapheme) or possible teaching sequence<\/a><\/li>\n
- an e-shop where her excellent moveable alphabets, workbooks and games are available for purchase<\/a><\/li>\n
- copious blog posts written in an informative, easy-going style on literacy theory and practice and ideas for teaching\u2014check out this\u00a0index of her posts<\/a>!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Champion of Decodable Books<\/h2>\n
As Alison says on the homepage:<\/p>\n
The Spelfabet materials were designed… for non-experts to use in teaching struggling spellers\/readers how to sound out words…. [These] carefully-sequenced, easy-to-use, affordable, downloadable and reproducible resources…should be used with decodable books<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
(Emphasis mine.) In Australia and the UK, a\u00a0decodable book\u00a0<\/strong>is the name for a book \u201cfor a beginning or struggling reader which contains words she or he can sound out…it contains sound-letter relationships and word types its reader has been taught.\u201d The quote is from Alison\u2019s recent blog post \u201cWhat is a decodable book?\u201d<\/a>\u00a0In it, she discusses, among other things, the difference between these books and the predictable\/repetitive texts so often given to beginning readers.\u00a0 She also touches on the reader’s experience of success and their motivation to continue learning to read, a topic explored in Victoria\u2019s post on the importance of decodable readers<\/a>.<\/p>\n
A Decodable By Any Other Name…<\/h2>\n
Both Alison and our\u00a0Victoria<\/a> are based in Australia, the former being a Melbournian and the latter a Sydneysider. For Australian and British educators, the correct term for this type of resource for literacy instruction is \u201cdecodable book<\/a>\u201d.\u00a0 North Americans often call these same resources phonics books<\/strong> or\u00a0phonics readers<\/strong>.\u00a0 The term decodable book does, however, seem to be catching on in NA (as evidenced by its use in the\u00a0list of decodable text sources distributed by the New-York-state-based Reading League<\/a>). We, of course, embrace the word\u00a0decodable<\/strong> when talking about the Teen & Adult Phonics (TAP) Library<\/a>. After all, our tagline is \u201cFully decodable<\/strong>, real literature for older emergent readers\u201d. Still, we slipped\u00a0phonics<\/strong><\/a> into the name for good measure.<\/p>\n
Decodable: Not \u201cAuthentic\u201d…But (Sometimes) Engaging<\/h2>\n
In another recent post of Alison\u2019s, this one talking about the difference between authentic texts and decodable texts<\/a>, she underscores the fact that a decodable text is not an \u201cauthentic text, written to entertain, inform, share an important idea, sell a product, document an experience or warm the cockles of anyone\u2019s heart.\u201d While it\u2019s true that the primary focus of decodables is different from authentic texts and the constraints on language can lead to a \u201cchoppy narrative\u201d as one reviewer has pointed out<\/a>, there are a number of excellent collections of decodables on the market that have quality images and illustrations and interesting or fun storylines that learners engage with.<\/p>\n
Victoria, who writes all the stories for our own TAP Library, takes particular care to write \u201cage-appropriate novels that have gritty issues about situations and characters that appeal to [mature readers]<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 Our wish is more than anything that older beginner readers will gain confidence reading our decodables and be motivated to continue reading. The is fundamental to the\u00a0philosophy and design considerations underlying TAP<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Where Can I Find Decodable Books?<\/h2>\n
Looking for decodables written specifically for teens and adults with features to support dyslexic learners?\u00a0 \u00a0Well, it seems like this is your lucky day, because that is exactly what we are creating with TAP. You can find a lot more information about the TAP Library<\/a> on this website, including a description of the titles available through our app<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The fact is, however, that most beginning and struggling readers will be too young for the themes in TAP.\u00a0 Fortunately, the Spelfabet site also has a extensive<\/strong> list of decodable books<\/a>\u00a0(with Alison\u2019s notes beside materials she has used herself) and decodable books in the form of apps<\/a>\u00a0(a section found about half way down the list). And yes, we\u2019re very happy to say that TAP is on both lists.<\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n
The systematic reading instruction community is pretty small. Most educators are soon familiar with Alison \u201cSpelfabet\u201d Clarke\u2019s work.\u00a0She has done so much to educate people about literacy instruction and to make affordable materials readily available.\u00a0 If you haven\u2019t yet had a look at Spelfabet<\/a>, get ready to feel like a kid in a candy store<\/strong>.\u00a0 Thanks, Alison, for all your contributions to promoting and supporting reading instruction for all.<\/p>\n
![\"Educators](\"http:\/\/www.focusontap.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/spelfabet-literacy-instruction-candy-store-300x203.png\")
<\/a>Gold mine, candy store… Spelfabet is such a great source of resources for literacy instruction that one metaphor just won\u2019t do!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An Amazing Resource for Literacy Instruction If you’re not familiar with Spelfabet, the website of Alison Clarke, then by all…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1008,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,170,169],"tags":[444,229,819,820,785,440,439,786,818],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.focusontap.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.focusontap.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.focusontap.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.focusontap.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.focusontap.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=955"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"http:\/\/www.focusontap.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1144,"href":"http:\/\/www.focusontap.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955\/revisions\/1144"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.focusontap.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.focusontap.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.focusontap.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.focusontap.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
- painstakingly edited spelling lists organized by sound (phoneme), spelling (grapheme) or possible teaching sequence<\/a><\/li>\n