In my years of teaching, I can’t count how many preschool or kindergarten classrooms I’ve passed that are doing “letter of the week.” While this may be an effective strategy for most students, students with significant disabilities may need another approach to learning letters and letter sounds. It may be time to move away from the “letter of the week” and try the “letter of the day” approach. In this blog post, we will explore why this strategy is more effective and how to implement it in the classroom.
The Research Behind Letter of the Day
The current research supports a Letter of the Day strategy vs. what was done in the past. Teaching students with autism or other special needs how to read requires an explicit and focused approach. Students with special needs need repetitive and frequent instruction. A “letter of the week” approach takes too long to revisit letters learned in the past. Learning one letter per day allows the instructor to “circle back” to letters already learned quicker. Jones and colleagues (2013) created focused alphabet instruction that taught each letter every 26 days. By the end of the school year, students were exposed to each letter about six times.
What Should Daily Instruction Look Like?
The alphabet instruction routine should be short – only 10 minutes per day. This makes it easy to cram into your school day. According to Jones and colleagues (2013), students should simultaneously be shown the uppercase and lowercase letters. Next, practice saying the sound that the letter represents. Afterward, students should practice looking for the day’s letter in text. Finally, students practice forming the letter. It’s important to create a multi-sensory approach. Students can sky-write the letter, write in sand, on your classroom’s interactive board, etc.
Recommended Learning Cycles
When I first heard about this approach, I thought teaching the alphabet in order was the way to go. That is not the case! The first learning cycle should include all 26 letters, but start with the letters that appear most often in student names. How did I figure this out? I wrote down all the names of the students in my class. Then, I ranked each letter based on popularity. This helped create the order of our first learning cycle.
Onward to the second cycle! In the second cycle, I taught all the alphabet letters in order. By now, it is 52 days into the school year and students have been instructed on all the letters twice. During the third cycle, I start teaching the letters that represent sounds in their name (ie. b, p, f, m). These letter sounds are usually easier to remember. Then, I move toward the letters that represent sounds not in their name (ie. h, q, w, y). In the fourth cycle, the letters are taught based on how often they are used in the English language. Start with the least used and move to the more popular.
The fifth cycle order is based on the order in which typically developing children learn to say sounds in spoken English. A possible order might be (n, m, p, h, t, k, y, f, b, d, g, w, s, l, r, v, z, j, c, i, a, e, o, u, x, q). Finally, the sixth cycle is based on the visual features that make letters easier or more difficult to distinguish. For example, p, d, and b all look very similar. Work on those letters together across each day.
How Do I Remember All That?
Oh boy! Those six cycles can be confusing and challenging to sort through when in the thick of teaching. How do I remember what letter I’m teaching each day? At the beginning of the year, I sit down and write out the letter order of each cycle. The book “Comprehensive and Literacy For All” I talk about in this blog post is an excellent reference. All in all, as long as you start with the letters in student names and have some sort of system you are doing great! O, and of course- if the majority of students have mastered certain letters, feel free to remove them from the cycle altogether.
Letter of the Day Adapted Books
Need an easy resource to use? My letter of the day adapted books incorporate repetition, letters in text, and letter formation in a hands-on and fun way! Check them out to use in your classroom today.
