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As Easy as ABC? Teaching and Learning About Letters in Early Literacy

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As Easy as ABC? Teaching and Learning About Letters in Early Literacy

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How can busy teachers effectively support letter knowledge in the context of authentic reading and writing?

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After reading, respond to the following...

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After reading, respond to the following...

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1. What did you think about as you read this article about letter learning in early literacy?

2. What are you still wondering about this topic?

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1. Letter learning is more complex than learning 26 letters in the English Language. There are four major components to letter knowledge: knowing the shape or form of letters, identifying letters by name, associating sounds to letters, and forming letters (upper and lowercase). These four components of letter knowledge will aide students in reading and writing. I am now conscious of how rigorous this early literacy skill is and how much time it can really take to learn the alphabet. 

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1. Letter learning is more complex than learning 26 letters in the English Language. There are four major components to letter knowledge: knowing the shape or form of letters, identifying letters by name, associating sounds to letters, and forming letters (upper and lowercase). These four components of letter knowledge will aide students in reading and writing. I am now conscious of how rigorous this early literacy skill is and how much time it can really take to learn the alphabet. 

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2. Something I am still wondering is how to support my dual kinders and how they have to learn this for two sets of alphabets and how confusing it could seam especially because the English and Spanish alphabet have the same letter formation. How can I further support my struggling readers/writers in learning their alphabets.
-Michelle Azzaretto

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1.After reading this article, I reflected on a few things. First, I liked how the author began the article by going through all of the steps that a student has to go through to learn letters, sounds, and make the connection to our written language. It is no wonder that sometimes the kindergarteners get overwhelmed with literacy as they are just starting out. I think as teachers working with K-1 students, who are working on letters and sounds, we need to keep this idea in mind. It will hopefully help us consider the point of view of our students. In addition, the other idea I kept thinking about and something I struggle with sometimes, what do we put our focus on? Throughout the article, the author included great details about the different components that could be included in a lesson, such as letter sorts, alphabet books, learning new letters, and writing that corresponds with the letters that day. I know there needs to be a balance between foundations skills, reader skills, and practicing the standards. Sometimes I can’t decide what to focus on, when working with a group of students who needs a little bit of everything. This article did help share a few quick and simple ways to embed more letter practice into small group lessons.

2. Something I would like to learn more about is the management of the groups. I think the examples in the articles were great with the differentiated letter sorts and individualized alphabet books. I would love to include these in some of my groups that are still working on letters and sounds. I think it would be difficult to manage each students’ known/unknown letters for multiple groups. I also like the individual alphabet books. I could see this being helpful for a few students, but difficult to find time to do in all of the small groups. I love the ideas shared and would like to get an idea of timing within a lesson and management among students.

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1.

As an early childhood teacher, this was a great article as it made me reflect on how complex learning letters and letter sounds can be for children in order for them to learn written language. I enjoyed that the article started out with having the reader read a note in Arabic to have it relate to how our students may be feeling as I didn’t know where to start and it was overwhelming.

I also reflected on how the article dug deep into letter knowledge, as before I thought that learning letters was “just learning letters”. In the article, it talked about how letter knowledge is the key in succeeding in reading and writing. When learning letters, it’s a lot of different steps including knowing the shape/form of letters, identifying letters by their name, letter sounds, forming letters, and understanding the classification concept of “letter”.

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I enjoyed reading about all of the different strategies an educator can use in the classroom to support students with learning letters and I would like to dig deeper into different strategies to support students in the early childhood instructional setting. Currently, I teach students 3-5 with Autism and we currently focus on a letter of the week and break it down by focusing on the letter, writing it, a letter book that involves students exploring different objects/animals/people that begin with that letter, and the letter sound. After reading this article, I feel as if I can incorporate more learning opportunities into the classroom and would like to research more and different strategies.

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1.  As I was reading, I was thinking about the importance of meeting students where they are in their learning.  I reflected on how I can be more responsive to students' needs and use instructional time to meet those needs.
2. I am still wondering how to effectively integrate letter learning into guided reading and acceleration groups. My students are at so many different levels in letter learning - even if they are in the same guided or acceleration group.

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1. After reading this article I reflected on the importance of teaching and learning about letters but also keeping in mind the many challenges students face as beginners of literacy learning. I realized how important it is for teachers to be responsive to each student's current letter knowledge and make the most of our instructional time with them. I also reflected om how important it is to teach students letter knowledge in reading and writing rather than presenting letters sequentially and using contrived scripts and fixed instructional sequences.

2. I am still wondering how I can imbed more of letter learning in my acceleration groups. Some groups I meet with have so many different needs within the group. I also love the idea of the individual alphabet book!

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1. As I was reading this article, I couldn't help but to think how I can apply some of these techniques right away in my class - I don't know about you, but I teach Kinder and this start of the year has been really difficult in many ways.  One of which being that the kiddos are much more less prepared with their letter and sound knowledge compared to years past.  I love the mention of making an alphabet book that the kids create on their own - with their handwriting of the letter and pictures that start with that letter sound that they can relate to!
2. I am still wondering which letter sound movement technique should we be using? Jolly Phonics? Wilson? Haggerty? and if there is a best practice - why aren't we trained in it...

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1. While I was reading this article I was thinking about how to incorporate the different strategies within my teaching. I was thinking about my students and what would be best for them. It is important to really use these strategies for students at this age, so that they can have a strong foundation moving forward. Students should be able to recognize not only the letters in the alphabet but their name, shape, and sound. Taking the time to allow students to master this skill will allow them to become better readers. If students begin to lack these basic skills, they will begin to struggle as a reader moving forward. Also, this article had a very important section about allowing students to predict what words are based on the pictures. It is important to model and show students that it is ok to not know something on the page, but you should always use what you see to help you learn. In many A, B, and even C books the pictures show exactly what the words say, so students should be able to use that as a strategy while reading! It definitely makes reading more enjoyable and gives students confidence when they can figure out the words on the pages based on the picture.

2. Something I am still wondering is how to incorporate all of these fun and engaging activities into one of my guided or lit accel groups while still introducing students to different texts. Groups go by so quickly, so I am thinking about where I can squeeze things like this in!

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1. As I read through this article, it reminded me of how important it truly is to prioritize meaningful connections for students when learning their letters and sounds. Creating and using individualized alphabet books can help students become so successful in learning their letters and their sounds. This is something that I have had the opportunity to do with my students in the past. I have seen what an impact this can have on students learning, even when they speak no English. What I also love about creating the alphabet book with students is that you get to know the students on a more personal level! It brings out the things that are most important to them :) Finally this article also taught me the importance of helping students attend to and understand the distinctive features of letters. Using letter sorts with magnetic letters to help students visual see and determine their features is something I am excited to try out soon!
2. I am still wondering how to seamlessly transfer the students connections between letters/sounds to their reading in a natural way. Should I allow students to use their alphabet book in a linking chart form next to them while attempting to read? At what point do I gradually release and pull this away?