Alphabet Knowledge Letter Recognition,

Letter Naming, and Letter Sequencing

Multisensory Teaching of Basic Language Skills

1. What is the topic of your chapter? Who is the target population?

2. What cognitive and linguistic concepts does the chapter address?

3. If the chapter explores the topic from several perspectives:

Linguistic, behavioral, cognitive, emotional, what are the specific strategies and
techniques suggested for each area?

4. Describe the progression of a sample lesson.

5. Provide a collection of at least 3 examples of activities that the chapter suggests.

6. Each group member must add an additional slide with 2 pros and 2 cons of the
content from the chapter.
1. The topic of our chapter is the importance of letter knowledge,
recognition and sequencing as a foundation to learning to read.
The first section of the chapter discusses the importance of alphabet
knowledge within the reading process. The next section provides some
practical tools for teaching these skills including structured effective literacy
teaching skills .
The target population of this article is early education teachers and reading
educators, in kindergarten-1st grade. Students in these grades come to school with
various degrees of letter knowledge. Studies have shown that children become
literate only through intense instruction, the more explicit and more supportive the
instruction the better the learning. This chapter illustrates the importance of
acquiring the teaching tools needed to implement intervention and help develop
literacy. It focuses mainly on the uppercase letters.
2. The cognitive and linguistic concepts in the chapter are:

Cognitive concepts:
- Orthography: recognition of letters and their relations to written symbols.
- Alphabet Knowledge: Identification and naming the letters of the alphabet. In
addition to that, knowledge of the sounds (phonemes) as well, as syllables, vowels
and constants.
- Memory: verbal, visual and kinesthetic - learning through body movements.
- Decoding: Acquiring new words based on information (Alphabet Knowledge and
memory).

- Reading: Reading “requires the ability to encode, store, and retrieve" (p. 238 )
information from the memory. Automatic reading “frees cognitive attention to
focus on higher level skills" (p.239) such as fluency and reading comprehension.
- Phonological awareness: individual awareness
to the sounds of words.
- Attention: visual attention to letters, words and
symbols. Focusing on comprehension of the text. Writing improves attention.

Linguistic concepts:
- Vocabulary: the stock of words of every person.
- Syntax: learning the structure of sentences.
3. The Linguistic, behavioral, cognitive and emotional perspectives
that the chapter explores:

Linguistic:
It is important to repeat the letters. If students have speech disabilities that will
need to be addressed and it takes longer for them to learn the alphabet. Letters
are the written symbols that are cognitively processed to make reading possible
unless and until a child can reliably recognize the letters, the mind cannot possibly
build stable connections between them. (Adams, 2002), p. 74

When students have a reliable knowledge of the phoneme-grapheme

correspondences, they will understand the alphabetic principle – the phonemes of
language imprint onto the letters they represent. All of this affects what the word
sounds like.
Behavioral
There is a need for automaticity when it comes to letter recognition and naming. The letter
naming must be fast and accurate. This is the basis for reading and understanding words in a
full way. These strategies are effective to judge if this goal was achieved:

Quick letter identification, and effortless identification.

It occurs with no intention and it can not be willfully stopped. There

are two factors that are very important to remember when teaching students:
1. Each student has his own pace
2. Each one processes and understands in his own time.

Not all 26 letters will be learned and understood equally. Some letters may take longer than
others. That is why it is important for a teacher to notice which letters may be more
difficult than others for some students. When the letters aren’t recognized, they should
study them harder.
Emotional:
Students with dyslexia need to practice on average 20 more times then the non dyslexic
student. This can be frustrating for the student. For example- a good reader might need to
practice learning a word perhaps 20 times while a poor reader will be challenged and will
need to practice it perhaps 400 times until reaching automatically! Writing is an
important role in the beginning reader's ability to recognize letters. Focusing the student's
attention on the features of letters shapes and reinforces letter recognition.
Cognitive:
Learning to read and understand letters is a procedure with 4 phases (Ehri)-
1. Recognizing words in connections with images
2. Recognizing phonological sounds, but not enough to process a full word.
3. Full alphabetic- this phase is mostly used by a reader with phonological knowledge
and uses this information to decode words.
4. Consolidated alphabetic phase- The reader gains automaticity and can recognize
entire words and their meanings
4. A sample lesson for alphabet knowledge

Introduction: Introduce the exciting topic of L-E-T-T-E-R-S letters! Ask the students if they
know any letters? What letter or sound do their names begin with? Sing the classic alphabet
song twice taking care to enunciate each letter slowly and carefully while pointing to the
classroom alphabet chart.

Transition: Ask each student to take out their uppercase letter strip.

Letter Identification: Go through the song two more times with the children pointing to the
letters as they sing them.

Practice: Take out the 3D blocks and have them place them over the
corresponding letters at random and time them. Ask them to do this
again but see if they can beat the previous time, repeat one more
time.
A sample lesson for alphabet knowledge cont’d

Practice: Ask the students to return the 3D letters to their box and continue with the
strip.  Have each student in turn, call out the letter that their name begins with and
have the class find the letter on the strip.  Just for fun have them find the letter Z for
your Aunt Zelda.

Practice counting out the number of letters in the alphabet.  Repeat the number 26.

Ending: Sing the Alphabet twice more with the students pointing to the letters as they
go on their strip. The second time ask the students to yell out the letter that their name
begins with when they reach it.
5. some examples of activities -
5a—Looking in the mirror. Tools required—mirror.

The teacher tells the pupils that there are 2 kinds of letters in the
alphabet. He explains that just as there are 2 kinds of sounds
(vowels and consonants ) in spoken words, there are two kinds of
letters in the alphabet. Vowel sounds open our mouths , and
consonants partially close our mouths. To illustrate this, he directs
the pupils to look in the mirror, and see what happens to their
mouths when they use the names of letters a, e, o and u. The
mouths stay open when they say these letter names, and he explains
that these are vowel sounds. Next the pupils use their mirrors to
discover that when they use the letter S, the mouth is partially
closed by the tongue and teeth. When they use the letter L, the
mouth is partially closed, with the tongue against the roof of the
mouth. When they say the letter m, the lips close the mouth .
After the pupils learn that the alphabet is made up of vowels and consonants letters, that
represent sounds, the teacher can vary a daily activity of touching and naming the letters by
having the student whisper or cheer for vowel letters .
5b—Matching and naming, Tools required—3D letter sets, Alphabet matching mat .

The teacher has students turn the 3D plastic letters right

side up ,and facing the correct direction inside the arc on
the alphabet mat. He tells the students that these are
letters found in the words we read and write. He points
out the alphabet on the alphabet strip, and leads
students to discover the same letters in a fixed order. He
then asks the students to name each letter before placing
the letter on top of the printed form on the alphabet
mat. If all the letters are not matched within 5 minutes
then the activity is repeated the next day, starting with
the letter matched the day before, and continuing with
additional letters until the student can place all the
letters on the mat.
He asks the students to check their work each time by touching and naming the letter.
5c—Alphabet bingo

Tools required— alphabet strip for reference, 3D letter set for each
student and 3D letter set for the teacher.

To begin this activity, each student selects any seven letters

from his container of letters, and places them on the desk in a
vertical column on the before side (left hand). The other letters
are put away. The teacher then selects one letter from another
container, shows it to the students, and names it. Students
repeat the name. If they have the letter on their desk, they move
it to the after side of the desk (right-hand) to form another
vertical column.

The first person to move all seven letters to the after side of the
desk is the winner.
6. Pros and Cons of the content from the chapter
Pros –

1. The incremental process of learning. The cumulative steps through

which students with little or no letter knowledge can acquire the English
alphabet.
2. The amount of practical activities given to teach the letters. Each stage
of letter recognition comes with a variety of games to make learning
more meaningful and fun.
Cons –

1. I felt that there were not enough instructions for teaching the
lowercase letters. Are they taught the with the same tools as the
uppercase?
2. The theory explanation at the beginning was long. Although it
was informative, I would have prefered a shorter introduction to the
topic.
6. Pros and cons Cont’d

Pros -

1. Takes into account students who have difficulty and refer to tools that
may make it easier for them.

2. Provides tools to meditate the letters to students while considering

different types of approaches versus different type of students

Cons -

1. Felt to me as if it was not concise enough.

2. Although the advices and tools that are given are effective, they do not
match the education system in Israel which limits teacher’s time and
resources.
6. Pros and cons Cont’d

Pros -

1. Showing how Multisensory teaching is beneficial for students.

2. Illustrating the importance and the effectiveness of gradual teaching

for students.

Cons -

1. Ignoring students who cannot read at all.

2. Not giving sufficient credit to the core factor of memory.

6. Pros and cons Cont’d
Pros -
1. The need to develop automatic letter and word recognition is critical. It frees
cognitive attention to focus on higher level skills, comprehension and fluency .
2. Complete letter knowledge is essential for reading success. A solid foundation needs
to be strongly formed early on a child’s academic career-because word knowledge is
based on letter knowledge.
Cons -
1. Frequent and brief instructional segments in class are more effective than less
frequent segments lasting longer. I wonder how many teachers have the patience and
knowledge to support guided practice ?
2. In a class of different reading levels, where students process information at different
rates, it is inevitable that some students will be left behind.
Letter knowledge requires more extensive exposure for some students, as well as
being time consuming. A child without secure letter knowledge may somehow slip
through the system.
The End!!!