Please Do Not Teach Your Students the Alphabet!!!!

Please do not teach your children the alphabet!!!

Okay, now that I have your attention, let me explain. When we teach students beginning reading in English we so often think that they need to know the names of each letter in the alphabet. This is not true!!

In fact, the names of the letters actually prove to be a stumbling block for many beginning readers of English. Let’s think about it the letter “N” is named “en” but that is not its sound. So when a person who only knows the names of the letters comes to “N” they say “en” not the phonetic sound. Do you see where I am going with this? Let’s look at the word “nest.” Someone not yet familiar with our written language but who has just learned the names of the letters will say “enest” (if they even get that far because they will probably also say “es” instead of “ssss”). This, of course, makes no sense.

So the simple solution, please teachers and families teach the letter sounds immediately not the letter names. You will be amazed at how much more quickly your learners will begin to read.

Another quick tip: When helping students sound out words help them blend letters together at least two at a time. So for example do not isolate "p" and "a" in the word "pat" but help learner look at the two beginning sounds together "pa" then put the final "t" sound. Try it! It works!!