Cipher, a new exhibition in The Memo, has been unveiled, showing the magic of language through a collection of puzzles, animal illustrations, and an interactive zine designed to link sounds with the letters.
The exhibition was designed by graphic artist Cora Zon, who is well-known to many locals as a zine workshop facilitator or a radio presenter at Yarra Valley FM.
She has tried to find an easy method to help people who are struggling with literacy.
“I’ve done a lot of things over the years, tinkering with it,” Ms Zon said.
“I’ve designed a game, puzzles and created a matrix like a wall chart to help with learning the sound spelling correspondences.”
At Cipher, Ms Zon introduces her outcomes, inviting visitors to explore the connections between sounds and letters through seven quotes about reading and the posters.
On the activity table, visitors can find Cipher, a zine that invites them to decode a quote themselves.
Ms Zon said she’d tried to make the code easier to understand on how spelling patterns and sound work.
“One of the things that I learnt was that there are so many spelling patterns in English, but there are 44 sounds,” she said.
“So it was easier, in a way, to start with the 44 sounds using the International Phonetic Alphabet, whereas some of the other methods start with the spelling patterns.
“For example, one of the methods will teach you 70 spelling patterns, and that will help you with 80 per cent of English, but then you still need to learn all those other smaller patterns.”
The project has deeply personal roots, beginning with a mother’s determination to support her daughter as she learnt to read.
Inspired by other methods she studied like Romalda Spalding’s Writing Road to Reading and LEM Phonics, Ms Zon and her daughter began creating a homemade game together.
“We were making a fishing game. I had the job of preparing small paper slips with spelling patterns like sh, ar, and ph to glue onto the fish, and my daughter was in charge of cutting out the fish shapes,” she said.
“I showed her an example of a simple fish shape and left her to it.
“When I returned, I found she had created a whole underwater world: a shark, a starfish, a dolphin and some completely invented sea creatures.”
It was an “aha” moment for the artist, who realised she could associate each spelling pattern with a corresponding animal: sh with shark, ar with starfish, and ph with dolphin.
“That’s when the idea was born, to draw on nature as a source of visual memory aids for helping children connect letters with sounds,” Ms Zon said.
A couple of years ago, Cora tested her idea at Healesville Primary School, supported by Rosie House.
Grade 5 and 6 students began creating their own collection of 44 Phoneme Zines, each zine highlighting the spelling patterns for a given sound.
Ms Zon said the project gave the children a hands-on way to engage with the idea that English is a complex but crackable code.
“The kids loved it. One of the students said to me that it was his favourite class and I said, ‘Why is that?’, and he said, ‘Because you take the time to explain it to us’,” she said.
“These were students who were having reading difficulties in Grades 5 and 6, and they were getting remedial assistance with reading.
“That’s why it’s really important for those kids who missed out in the early years. There is a way to catch up. This is designed to help even adults who are struggling with reading to understand the patterns of English.”
The Cipher is now on display until 9 November at the Memo, Healesville.
