Teaching The Alphabet!!

Every one of us links our first experience of learning the alphabet to our first literacy and reading experience. Sometimes it is accompanied with a memory of the catchy and universal alphabet song children are taught to retain the names of the letters, or the games we played to match letters with their corresponding sounds.

We all have learnt the ‘Alphabet’ early on during our education; because that’s precisely why I can articulate my thoughts here and you can read them. Learning the alphabet is a key ingredient of learning to communicate. Years of providing special education in NYC schools to children with learning disability, I came across three kinds of young students who struggle with picking up the alphabet.

•         Reading without Learning:

Some children do not learn the alphabet at all (the letter name and the sound), yet they learn to read. These preschoolers somehow manage the process of learning by paving their own pathway to it. They sidestep the whole process of matching the letter with the sound and skip to reading the whole word, observing the patterns in words and written language.

So, not all children require a comprehensive alphabetic-teaching. It is not that they already know it, but they can efficiently skip much of this process, on their journey to reading and writing.

•        Recognizing without Identifying:

Some children recognize the sounds that letters make and thus, can read some easy words; nevertheless, facing difficulty in identifying all the names of the letters. These kids can fluently read simple books because of their efficiency at sound-symbol correspondence. They know the sound, but not the letter name. Thus, they confront complication only while spelling out the words.

Such children eventually learn the letter names as well. Thus, it is of no use to hold back their reading experience until all 26 letters are mastered.

•        Reading- Not Out Loud:

This counsel involves OVERDEPENDENCE on Oral Reading as the ONLY path to the reading development.  Reading is not always associated with reading out loud. Reading habits vary in children; some read well out loud all the time and others prefer reading quietly. The latter ones sound out the possible sound-symbol relationship internally and mutely move their lips and mouths to form sounds. 

Looking back at my years of providing special education in NYC to children with learning disability, I firmly believe that teaching the alphabet is NOT the one and only forerunner to their reading development. Children can learn to read in their own unique way.