In my experience, it seems more consistent to say, “Oh, I see the letter A in Target,” than “I see an /a/ (short a sound) in Target…but it doesn’t make the /a/ sound. For example, b’s sound in isolation tends to sound more like /buh/, which can make blending it with other letter sounds difficult for beginning readers.ģ- Letter sounds are more abstract and aren’t as consistent as letter names. W, Y, and H are the only three exceptions.Ģ- Letter names make great labels for letters, as many of the letter sounds are harder to make in isolation. Just three of many reasons I believe this (I would probably bore you with all my reasons):ġ- The majority of letter names give the child a huge clue as to the sound (or one of the sounds) they make. For example, the letter D has the /d/ sound at the beginning and the letter F has the /f/ sound at the end. I believe, after reading the reading research out there (such as Ehri, Invernizzi, Cunningham, Calkins, and McBride-Chang), that BOTH letters and letter sounds are highly useful for teaching kids to read and write. And before I go too much further, please hear me say this: if teaching your child her letter sounds first is working, GO FOR IT! As you’ve probably guessed from the title of my post, I respectfully disagree. It is believed that letter sounds are more helpful and useful to pre-readers than letter names and therefore, should be taught first. So which is it? Should we teach letters or letter sounds? There is a widely-used teaching approach which teaches letter sounds first and letter names next. Ultimately, you have to find what works best for your child and stick with it.
You may completely agree or disagree with my teaching tips. Note that I’m going to explore some hot topics in regards to letters and letter sounds. If you have a younger child (toddler age), I share more tips about teaching toddlers the alphabet in this post. So, today I’m going to share a few ideas for teaching kids in this age-range.
#Have fun teaching letter m song how to
Welcome to Part 1 of Teaching the Alphabet! I receive several emails a week, asking for advice on how to teach letters and/or letter sounds to children from Pre-K through 1st grades.