Phonemic Awareness Alphabetic Understanding Fluency Vocabulary Comprehension

Learn what this is

Learn why it's important

Learn how to teach it

Learn how to assess your students

  
 
 

Teaching the Alphabetic Principle:
Alphabetic Principle programs and materials

Letter-Sounds materials should:

  1. Separate auditorily and/or visually similar letters (e.g., e/i, d/b).
  2. Introduce some continuous sounds early (e.g., /m/, /s/).
  3. Teach the sounds of letters that can be used to build many words (e.g., m, s, a, t).
  4. Introduce lower case letters first unless upper case letters are similar in configuration (e.g., Similar: S, s, U, u, W, w; Dissimilar: R, r, T, t, F, f).
An Acceptable Sequence for Introducing Letters
a m t s i f d r o g l h u c b n k v e w j p y T L M F D I N A R H G B x q z J E Q
(Carnine, Silbert, & Kame'enui, 1997; see References)

Features of Well-designed Letter-sound Correspondence Instruction

  1. Are easily confused sounds separated over several lessons? (d/b/p, e/i, m/n)
  2. Are letter-sounds that occur in a large number of words introduced early in the sequence?
  3. Is the rate of letter-sound correspondence introduction manageable for the learner but adequate to allow multiple words to be made within 2-3 weeks? While there are no definitive guidelines for scheduling letter-sound correspondences, a rate of introducing one new letter-sound correspondence every 2-3 days is reasonable.
  4. Does the sequence include a few short vowels early to allow students to build words?
  5. Does the sequence begin with several continuous sounds?

For help in evaluating and selecting curricula and models of reading program implementation, visit the Curricula section of this website.

Next Arrow
 

© 2002 - 2004

Address comments or questions about this website to Tanya Sheehan (tsheehan@uoregon.edu).