Letter Recognition

Young children need to develop the insight that sounds are represented by a letter or by letter combinations in text. 

• When introducing letters, begin with the most common.  Try to sequence introduction of letters or patterns that do not look alike or sound similar to avoid confusion.  For example, do not introduce /f/ and /th/ together.
• Play matching games and concentration games to match letters and combinations.

• FREE Go Fish Letters

  Play Go Fish for Letters.  On separate index cards, write a capital letter and its lower case match on another card. The players take turns asking if the other players have the match for a letter in their hand.  Keep playing until all the upper case and lower case letters have been matched. This game can be played with sounds and encourages sound to letter matches.  For example, one player will ask for the /b/ sound and the other play will hand the player the letter b. Players need to be able to understand that some sounds like /c/ and /g/ make the same sound as other letters. Rules regarding the sounds need to be established before the game starts and will depend on the level of the players.
• Have children sort words that begin or end with a particular letter.  This will help children learn to scan the word and categorize words according to a rule.
• Have a letter of the week and encourage children to locate words that have that beginning or ending letter. Have letter 'show and tell' where students bring in an object that they have found that begins with a targeted letter.