Under the new Engage NY... teachers are being asked to teach the letter sound before the name of the letter. Does anyone do this? Does it work? Thoughts? Ideas?
I am using ENY, too, and have heard of this strategy before...not sure it works very well. In PreK, they are learning the names of the letters, then we stop when they come to K? I did the same way I always have: intro the letter name and the sound at the same time. I use the kids' names a lot, so want them to know what the names of the letters in their names are!
I guess we'll see how it really works next year when the Phonemic Awareness/Phonics is rolled out.
We teach the sound first. example the letter 's' the name pronounces es- but the sound is ss- and we used to have kids thinking that words like escalator starts with a 's'... now they know it is ss so escalator they know starts with the e sound...
With a very large ELL population in my district, all teachers do Anchor Picture, Sound, Letter Name (sound/spelling cards), starting in Pre-K and going all the way to 5th grade. Every day the students in K & 1 chant the entire alphabet that way: Apple, A (short letter sound), A (letter name); Bear, B (letter sound), B (letter name), and so on.
We have been doing this for over 100 years. I just added the names when we did DIBLES and Orton.
They really don't need letter names if you think of it. Unless they are spelling out loud often and that is Adults.
Our school uses the Spalding method -- which strongly emphasizes letter sounds vs. letter names. When our kids practice their spelling words, they do it by sounding the words out, not by saying the names of the letters in the word. It is amazing to see how well the kindergartners and first graders write!
I've taught in four different school districts, and this method is by far the most effective I've used.
"thats good to have them sing a song with the sound and the name... i makes it stick in the brain!"
I thought so too, once upon a time. I taught my first class the Discovery Toys Sounds Like Fun CD song: Ay Ay apple ah ah ah, Bee Bee baby buh buh buh, etc.
Then I noticed that a few kids had to sing all the way from A up to the letter I was flashing in order to access the sound for that letter I flashed.
Not good. I now teach the kids to say " ah and the name is ay" etc. when I flash the letter card.
My coooperating kindergarten teacher used the Spaulding cards when she flashcarded. She held up one set of mixed capitals and lowercase and kids had to say letter sound. The next set required that they only say the letter name.
I would duplicate her method but my kids are pretty young, and I don't think they have the attention span to sit through 2 sets of flashcards!
I could care less is the kids coming knowing the letter names, but I love when they know all the letter sounds. I can move forward with reading and writing if they know the sounds. I'll call that sucker by its sound and teach the names that way. I mean the name of the letter is not the priority for literacy.
I too thought letter names were not that important, and that sounds were what mattered for reading, til I discovered that in order to move on to letter sounds during PALS testing, the kids had to recognize the letter names first!
It makes total sense to teach the sounds and not to worry about the names until later. I grew up in England where they taught the sounds and did not worry about names. The ABC song was the sang with the sounds. Not sure if they still teach that way, but it makes sense.
> 
01-24-2013, 01:45 PM
