A Ballarat-designed card game is set to help children around the world improve their reading, writing and spelling.
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Shine Learning director Miranda Donald has been using the Sounds Write program to teach phonics to children to boost their reading, writing and spelling skills for several years - including a growing number who had struggled during and after COVID remote learning.
But after a fruitless search for resources to better engage children and add more fun into their learning, she came up with her own.
The result is WizWords, a set of cards and mini whiteboard that can be used to play seven different literacy games that is based on the Sounds Write phonics program but anyone can use.
![Jag, 9, and Sanna, 7, play a game using the Ballarat-designed WizWords with Shine Learning tutor Bryony Donald. Picture by Lachlan Bence Jag, 9, and Sanna, 7, play a game using the Ballarat-designed WizWords with Shine Learning tutor Bryony Donald. Picture by Lachlan Bence](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/michelle.smith/b027f615-534d-4148-bad8-2ab15cb3c7e9.jpg/r0_316_6192_3811_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
"At first I designed, laminated and did bad drawings on cards of words that could be used for practice with my children in one-on-one and small group learning ... and the kids kept asking to play with the cards and use the cards," she said.
"I thought if I was going to do it, I might as well go to the creator of Sounds-Write and see if they want to work together."
After contacting the Sounds Write developers in the UK, where the system is used extensively, Ms Donald partnered with them to create WizWords which from this month is available globally.
Previously the only resources aligned with their program were books.
Buninyong illustrator and designer Jacinta Weyers collaborated with Ms Donald to come up with eye-catching and engaging designs replacing Ms Donald's own drawings used on the self-made cards she had been using with students at her Sebastopol tutoring centre.
"Sounds Write is a really good phonics program but you need to be trained and it has to be delivered very explicitly and systematically to be effective," Ms Donald said.
WizWords though is targeted to young learners aged around five to eight but can be used from four to 12.
"It goes through basic phonics, sounds, the whole alphabet and blending up to five sounds together in words ... from as as basic as mat all the way up to witch," she said.
And each of the seven games is designed to incorporate writing, reading and spelling.
![Shine Learning director Miranda Donald developed WizWords in collaboration with Buninyong illustrator Jacinta Weyers. Picture by Lachlan Bence Shine Learning director Miranda Donald developed WizWords in collaboration with Buninyong illustrator Jacinta Weyers. Picture by Lachlan Bence](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/michelle.smith/ab0b75aa-e043-4e0d-a67a-d0b1b65715e4.jpg/r0_0_5633_3555_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
"Children don't even realise when they are playing a memory game they are reading 50 word cards," she said. "If I said let's read 50 flash cards, a disengaged learner is not going to do it but if children are playing a game they read each sound and word.
"It is exposing children to all those letters in a really calm, systematic way."
Ms Donald's WizWords will be available throughout Australia and New Zealand, while the UK operation will produce a version for the UK, US and Canada.
Phonics has made a comeback as a preferred way of teaching the building blocks of literacy to young people, after falling out of style over recent decades.
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The Western Australian education department has recently adopted Sounds-Write in their schools, and many Ballarat schools are training their teachers in the program.
Ms Donald said it was vital to have great resources to engage and encourage early readers, especially in a climate of low literacy rates, school refusers and students struggling in the aftermath of COVID.
There are likely to be two more sets of WizWords in the future to help build the literacy skills of older children.
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