The Complexity of Letter-Sound Acquisition

It's finally summer break, and I get to spend the entire summer with my three-year-old daughter.  I'm so lucky to have this time, and I want to make the most of it, finding a balance between laughing and learning.  Somewhere among vacations, swimming lessons, princess tea parties, trips to the park, baking (oh, and shopping, too-per my daughter's request!), I already know that summer is going to breeze by, but I'm determined to help her begin learning the letters of the alphabet. 

Two days after school let out,  I started to create a plan…start with A and end with Z.  I like order, structure, organization, and alphabetical order seemed only logical.  So, I prepared several crafts to accompany the first few letters of the alphabet, each placed in its own, distinctly labeled plastic bag, ready to go.  That's when I started reading a bit of research, which now has me reconsidering my approach.   Please bare with me through this post.  I PROMISE there is purpose to it!

When parents talk about their children "knowing the alphabet" or teachers share that their students "know the letters of the alphabet," those phrases can touch on a variety of skills.  Do they mean that the letters can be receptively identified or expressively identified?  Are they talking about upper-case letters or lower-case letters?  Does letter knowledge mean sound recognition or sound production?  

A 2001 article by Janice Wood and Bronwyn McLemore published in The Florida Reading Quarterly: Critical Components of Early Literacy - Knowledge of the Letters of the Alphabet and Phonic Instruction, provides great insight as well as instructional strategies for teaching early literacy (which I will talk about in a later post).  This is where I learned that teaching a "letter of the week" would not be as beneficial as I originally thought.  Not only would I be presenting letters at a slow rate, but they would not necessarily be connected to literacy by doing oodles of fun crafty "stuff."   The article shared that children learn best when the letters are not taught in isolation but rather when connected to meaningful reading and/or writing activities. 

A second article published in 1998 by Child Development: The Foundations of Literacy: Learning the Sounds of Letters (R. Treiman, R. Tincoff, K. Rodriguez, A. Mouzaki, and D. Francis) looked at children's knowledge of letter sounds and names, and then explored factors that made sound-letter correspondence easier to learn than others.  YIKES! What in the world does that mean?  It's actually simpler than it sounds.  In a nutshell, a child's ability to learn a sound is related to properties of a letter's name.  There are three main properties of a letter's name:  

1.  the letter's sound is at the beginning of its name such as D and V
2.  the letter's sound is at the end of its name such as M and L
3.  the letter's sound is not in its name such as Y and H

The findings revealed that the letter sound at the beginning of its name (#1) was the best determination of letter-sound knowledge, followed by the letter sound at the end of its name (#2), and finally, the letter sound not in its name (#3).

After digesting this information, I will definitely be making some changes.  Ultimately, I have the summer to things out.  In the grand scheme of things, what truly matters is that I'm spending time with my daughter, and any type of learning is valuable.  

I'll be sharing my ideas in the next day or two…just as soon as I figure it out myself!  If you have any thoughts or ideas,  I'd love to hear them!  I'm just learning as a I go.