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ABC Songs and Beyond

Your goal is to help children learn to recognize and name individual letters. While learning to sing or chant an alphabet song is not sufficient for developing this skill, it is an important first step. Teaching children an alphabet song or chant familiarizes them with the names of the letters. Their familiarity with letter names will support children as they learn to recognize and name individual letters.

There are many different alphabet songs and chants to choose from. It helps to choose one song or chant to use on a daily basis. It is also fun to include other popular alphabet songs and chants for variety every now and then. Try to choose an alphabet song or chant that helps children distinguish the names of each letter. Try to choose an alphabet song or chant that breaks the chant between L, M, N, O, and P rather than running these letter names together. Singing or chanting an alphabet song and playing alphabet games can be easily incorporated into your daily circle time.

Keep in mind that in adddition to having children singing and chanting the names of letters, you will need to plan a sequence for introducing and teaching children how to identify each letter of the alphabet. Your instructional goal is to help children make distinctions among letters—to help them see the details in how marks and shapes come together to form a specific letter. There are a few basic shapes that are used to form just about every letter. These include sticks, curves, circles, slants, tails, and tunnels. You can help children categorize letters by these features as they learn them.

You may want to create games and activities where children organize a pile of alphabet letters into these groups. During these activities you should help children focus on noticing specific features of each letter (sticks, curves, circles, slants, tails, tunnels) rather than naming letters. Keep in mind that as you systematically introduce and teach the names of the letters, you may not want to introduce letters that share the same features all at once. Rather, you may want to organize the order in which you introduce letters to emphasize contrasting features.

You will want to keep track of children’s progress in recognizing and naming individual letters during the year. You may notice some children having a difficult time remembering the names of letters you have introduced and taught to the class. Be sure to provide additional practice opportunities for these students. As you work with your students during the year, you may also notice that they learn to recognize and name uppercase letters more readily than lowercase letters. It is much easier to distinguish the differences among uppercase letters than lowercase letters. However, by the end of the year, you want your students also to be able to recognize and name some lowercase letters. Lowercase letter recognition is essential to reading, because most of the letters we encounter in text are lowercase letters.

Using Children’s Names

The most important word to any child is his or her name. Using children’s names to introduce and teach the letters of the alphabet is a great place to start. It’s a good idea to have many models of children’s names in the classroom. For example, have the class roll on your classroom door, label students' cubbies with their names, and have a class job list that includes each child’s name. Play games or sing songs with your students’ names.

As children become familiar with the letters in their names, they may also start to pay attention to the letters in their friends’ names or to the letters in other words that are important to them. Use these important words as anchors to help children remember the names and shapes of the letters.