Alphabetic Principle
Teaching Strategies and Examples: Letter-Sound Correspondence
Instructional Design Considerations
Conspicuous Strategies
- Teacher actions should make the task explicit. Use consistent and brief wording.
Mediated Scaffolding
- Separate auditorily and visually similar letters.
- Introduce some continuous sounds early.
- Introduce letters that can be used to build many words.
- Introduce lower case letters first unless upper case letters are similar in configuration.
Strategic Integration - Simple Before Complex
- Once students can identify the sound of the letter on two successive trials, include the new letter-sound correspondence with 6-8 other letter sounds.
- When students can identify 4-6 letter-sound correspondences in 2 seconds each, include these letters in single-syllable, CVC, decodable words.
Review Cumulatively and Judiciously
Use a distributed review cycle to build retention:
| N K N K K N N K K K K N |
| N = new sound; K = known sound |
| Example (r = new sound; m, s, t, i, f, a = known sounds): r m r s t r r i f a m r |