Teaching the Alphabet: ABC Order or Different Order?

[Christina72684]

How do you teach the alphabet? One letter a week? Biweekly? In ABC order? I've also seen where preschools have taught in a different order, going with what's easiest to write and finishing with the harder letters, like I think M, H, and T were one of the first few letters.

I want to do what's best for the kids and what makes sense. I'm sure there are several ways to teach it and they would all work, just wondered if anyone had any advice. Thanks!

[Blackcat31]

Our kindergarten teachers here recommend teaching out of order.

Uppercase and lowercase at the same time.

Out of order learning is suppose to help with better retention.

No idea if that's true or not.

I just blend letter learning into our regular day and don't have a specific curriculum for letter learning.

[daycare]

I don't do in prefer. I teach based off of our book we are reading

So if we are reading Brown bear brown bear. Then the letter focus is B

If we read caps for sale the letter is C

If I read take me to the zoo I might choose m and z

I then really emphasize the letter sounds when I read.
Like C sound in caps for sale. Really focus on the letter C and C sound

[Unregistered]

I always start with the first letter of the names of the kids in care. I mark all their art work with the first letter of their name to start, then move on to the full name. Then random till we work our way through.

[daniellesweety1]

Our kindergarten teachers here recommend teaching out of order.

Uppercase and lowercase at the same time.

Out of order learning is suppose to help with better retention.

No idea if that's true or not.

I just blend letter learning into our regular day and don't have a specific curriculum for letter learning.

When I taught my daughter her alphabet, I taught her in order and as soon as she learned them that way, I began teaching out of order. Random letters. She mastered that way really quick. I noticed children who learn it by song seem to always skip the letters M N. So that was my reasoning for teaching my daughter 2 ways. It worked really well. A lot of children don't know their alphabet outside of the actual song. I truly believe the out of order way helps them retain.

[SignMeUp]

I have 4" sparkly letters snaking their way around my playroom floor. The kids crawl on them, walk on them, dance on them, play on them. They usually first learn the first letter of their own name, then the first letters of their friends and family members. It's cognitive enhanced by social

During preschool, we do the alphabet in order, but also skip ahead and back throughout the year. We do capital, lower case and sound(s). Adding in learning the letter sounds seemed to make learning the letters easier.

I did a twenty-hour literacy class some years ago, and they told me that my floor alphabet should be in order, left to right, top to bottom, like reading.
So I did that. And no one played on it anymore

So I made it playful again, and we are back to normal :: My one-year-olds typically know a few letters, and it goes from there

[AmyKidsCo]

I don't "teach" the ABCs, I talk about letters as the children show interest. Usually it's the first letter of their own name first, then the first letter of their friends' names, then words in the environment, last names, etc. Eventually they learn all the letters.

[MarinaVanessa]

A provider friend of mine that used to teach Kinder is teaching me how to teach the kids how to read. She teaches out of order based on sounds and letters in their names, sounds that are easy to say, letters that are easiest to write etc.

PM me so that I can remember to send you what she gave me. I had success with it so fast (within weeks) that I asked her lead a workshop for our family child care association.

[Second Home]

My sons pre school taught letter that were easiest to write first , the letters like C, L T . The fewer lines to make the letter and then they moved on to letters with more lines and curves B,R,S.

[Stepping]

We usually teach the letters in their name first. Then we teach letters that are easier to pick up phonetically and can be used to build Cvc words.

So, if a child has s,t,p,a,e they can write sat, pat, set, pet etc.

The order letters are learned can be found here:

http://jollylearning.co.uk/overview-about-jolly-phonics/

[spinnymarie]

I used to teach Kindergarten, but we do alphabetical order. When teaching them to write them, in K, the kids will do them out of order, but I'm much less concerned with good handwriting at this stage.
We read alphabet books, sing alphabet songs, it makes sense to do them right in order for the large group, for me. We do one letter focus each week, but we also then talk about different letters all throughout the year in small groups.
For the intervention students who came to K with no letter recognition, we would get out an alphabet book with the uppercase letter, lowercase letter and a picture using the letter sound on each page. Kids would trace each one with their finger and say the name of the letter (A, a, aaaahh, apple). Five minutes/day they'd have most of them within a month.

[tomato]

I am using a curriculum of my own invention, based on word families, or two or more words differing in only one letter and phoneme. My rationale is Piaget’s finding that preschool children can focus on only one variable at a time.

I am in the second week and I have been happy with the results. Following is my schedule. Suggested picture book titles are in parentheses:

May 9-13: bat, cat, mat, rat, hat (Play with a and t by Jane Belk Moncure)
May 16-20: lad, mad, pad, sad, Dad (Power Phonics: A Day with my Dad)
May 23-27: can, fan, ma, pan, van
May 30-June 3: cap, lap, map, nap, tap
June 6-10: bed, fed, Jed, led, Ned, red (Play with e and d by Jane Belk Moncure)
(Power Phonics: Every Egg)
June 13-17: Rick, lick, Mick, Nick, sick,
June 20-24: fill, hill, Jill, pill, sill, Will
June 27-July 1: hip, dip, lip, nip, sip, tip
July 4-8: big, fig, pig, wig (Play with i and g by Jane Belk Moncure)
(Power Phonics: Little Pigs, Big Pigs)
July 11-15: cop, hop, mop, pop, top
July 18-22: bug, hug, jug, lug, mug, rug, tug (Play with u and g by Jane Belk Moncure)
(Power Phonics: Just Bugs)
July 25-29: gum, hum, sum
August 1-5: bun, fun, nun, sun (Power Phonics: Family Fun)
August 8-12: cut, hut, nut
August 15-19: tub, rub, cub, sub
August 22-26: bug, hug, jug, mug, rug, tug

As much as possible, I call letters by their sounds rather than their names. However, I can’t abolish letter names entirely, because the children have already been exposed to Sesame Street.

I made up a song to the tune of Oh, Susannah!

O the C says /k/, the C says /k/,
The C says /k/ /k/ /k/,
O the C says /k/, the C says /k/,
The C says /k/ /k/ /k/.

As for the alphabet, I don’t push it. At a Montessori school where I once worked, I sang the ABC Song every day, but only because the children requested it every day. Montessori adherents argue that knowledge of the alphabet is useful for using the phone book, the dictionary, and the encyclopedia, but not for learning to read.

[Unregistered]

When I taught kindergarten I taught them out of order. When I taught preschool in order. Now I do in order. I just kind of like the feel of in order!

I agree handwriting isn't a focus for me. I incorporate all kinds of fun abc activities. We play with letters, sounds, words more than anything.

I also chart poems on tagboard for group reading, we find letters we know, find words we know, talk about the title, where to start reading, using picture cues, predictable sentences, etc.

I work on rhyming too. Most rhymes are word families ..cat, bat, sat, the at family!

One thing to note if you are teaching letter sounds....it's an isolated sound. So B is not buh, it's "B", c is not Cuh it is "C", D is not Duh, etc.
I've heard teacher say these inappropriately even.

It's hard to explain and some letters are harder than others to isolate. It's easy to say Laa, Laa instead of "L"!

[Unregistered]

Also, I love incorporating environmental print activities! Very early children learn to " read" signs, packaging, etc. the first might be stop on a stop sign, but they will surprise you about their knowledge of words like Wal-Mart, Target, Barbie, and names on boxes of food, etc.

Go to Hubbard's Cupboard, click on literacy, click on ABC Centers, click on environmental print. There are lotto games I used in Kindergarten. Now some may not be familiar or familiar to younger kids, but overall these are fun! Many kids will know band-aid or play-doh. The shapes of these names are quite familiar to lots of kids.

I made some trash books. I have names cut from food boxes like Cheerios and glued onto construction paper and laminated.. Leave some of the picture too for picture cues. I made them into books we read. It lets kids know they are surrounded by literacy! They soon start to look for words they know. Just another fun way to play with literacy!

There is a ton of info on this site!

[NightOwl]

I am using a curriculum of my own invention, based on word families, or two or more words differing in only one letter and phoneme. My rationale is Piaget’s finding that preschool children can focus on only one variable at a time.

I am in the second week and I have been happy with the results. Following is my schedule. Suggested picture book titles are in parentheses:

May 9-13: bat, cat, mat, rat, hat (Play with a and t by Jane Belk Moncure)
May 16-20: lad, mad, pad, sad, Dad (Power Phonics: A Day with my Dad)
May 23-27: can, fan, ma, pan, van
May 30-June 3: cap, lap, map, nap, tap
June 6-10: bed, fed, Jed, led, Ned, red (Play with e and d by Jane Belk Moncure)
(Power Phonics: Every Egg)
June 13-17: Rick, lick, Mick, Nick, sick,
June 20-24: fill, hill, Jill, pill, sill, Will
June 27-July 1: hip, dip, lip, nip, sip, tip
July 4-8: big, fig, pig, wig (Play with i and g by Jane Belk Moncure)
(Power Phonics: Little Pigs, Big Pigs)
July 11-15: cop, hop, mop, pop, top
July 18-22: bug, hug, jug, lug, mug, rug, tug (Play with u and g by Jane Belk Moncure)
(Power Phonics: Just Bugs)
July 25-29: gum, hum, sum
August 1-5: bun, fun, nun, sun (Power Phonics: Family Fun)
August 8-12: cut, hut, nut
August 15-19: tub, rub, cub, sub
August 22-26: bug, hug, jug, mug, rug, tug

As much as possible, I call letters by their sounds rather than their names. However, I can’t abolish letter names entirely, because the children have already been exposed to Sesame Street.

I made up a song to the tune of Oh, Susannah!

O the C says /k/, the C says /k/,
The C says /k/ /k/ /k/,
O the C says /k/, the C says /k/,
The C says /k/ /k/ /k/.

As for the alphabet, I don’t push it. At a Montessori school where I once worked, I sang the ABC Song every day, but only because the children requested it every day. Montessori adherents argue that knowledge of the alphabet is useful for using the phone book, the dictionary, and the encyclopedia, but not for learning to read.

This exactly, except for the age group this is taught to. Here, kindergarten focuses on sight words and this curriculum type is introduced in first grade, not pre-k. Pre-k seems a little young for this formal of an education, in my opinion.