Child has trouble remembering letters out of order

[ExcitedMama]

DD is 5.5 and knows the alphabet and her letters when doing them in order. She’s working on letter sounds now. When she sees letters out of order she doesn’t always know them. Her older brother retained this information and was working on reading at her age. Is this normal or cause for concern?

[MerryAtHope]

She probably just needs more mixed review to really become automatic with them. 

[HomeAgain]

Is it important?
I mean, she's not using the information, so that could be part of why it doesn't stick.  It's one thing to memorize a sequence, it's another to utilize the components.  We don't use letter names in everyday work.  We use sounds. I'd skip the letter drill and work on sounds only - something she can use - and see how she does with remembering sounds as she's applying them to words.

[PeterPan]

It would only be a cause for concern if there were other things going (difficulty rhyming or doing age-appropriate phonological processing tasks, difficulty with age-appropriate visual memory tasks, language or developmental delays, other flags, etc.). Depends on the bigger picture.

[Gil]

On 5/22/2018 at 7:04 PM, ExcitedMama said:

DD is 5.5 and knows the alphabet and her letters when doing them in order. She’s working on letter sounds now. When she sees letters out of order she doesn’t always know them. Her older brother retained this information and was working on reading at her age. Is this normal or cause for concern?

Sounds like she has good 1-1 correspondence and uses that to point out letters based on the ABC song, but doesn't recognize the letters themselves. You can check if she knows the ABC song and uses 1-1 correspondence to point out letters by giving her a list of ABCS that starts normally, but has letters out of order throughout the middle, and see if she even notices the change, or if she happily sings and points to each letter regardless.

This isn't cause for concern. If she fails the task above, then it's is a simple enough fix. Work on teaching her to recognize the letters directly. Just teach 2 or 3 letters at a time for a whole week. Pick some letters (not in sequence) and take a week where you spend small amounts of time throughout the day: playing, writing, tracing and sounding just those 2 or 3 letters throughout the day. Ask your child to trace the /f/ or to point to the /j/ on the page, place a sticker on /m/, etc. Once she begins to really recognize a letter, have her point out the letters on the ABC chart and on the page when you are reading to her, etc.

The next week, add 1 or 2 new letters (still not in sequence) and wash-rinse-repeat the process

 

 

[Ellie]

On 5/22/2018 at 6:04 PM, ExcitedMama said:

DD is 5.5 and knows the alphabet and her letters when doing them in order. She’s working on letter sounds now. When she sees letters out of order she doesn’t always know them. Her older brother retained this information and was working on reading at her age. Is this normal or cause for concern?

Not cause for concern, but this is one of the reasons I didn't teach the alphabet song. :-)

One of the many reasons I love Spalding is that it teaches letters which begin with circles, then letters that begin with lines--IOW, not the letters of the alphabet in order. Of course, there comes a time when children have to learn how to alphabetize, but that's a different process. :-)

[sweet2ndchance]

I never taught the alphabet song either to any of my kids. We just started teaching letter sounds from the time they were toddlers. Nevertheless, all six of them eventually learned the alphabet song on their own by the age of 5 or 6 without me teaching them or singing it with them. Even my child who couldn't hear anything properly until he had tubes placed when he 5 years old learned the song without being taught or purposely exposed to it.

Just as a thought experiment, how long do you think it would take you to match 26 foreign symbols, such as Mandarin or Sanskrit, to 26 different sounds and know them out of order if they were only presented to you in a certain order until you knew them in that order? Some people would be able to do it more quickly than others but most people would struggle for a while to recognize them out of order.

Most of us don't remember a time when we didn't know our letter sounds so it can seem strange when a child struggles but if you can put yourself in your child's shoes by trying the thought experiment above, it can put their struggle into a context you can more easily understand.

[klmama]

FWIW, when my adult dc were little, they enjoyed practicing/learning their letter sounds with the Leap Frog Letter Factory video.  

 

 

[ElizabethB]

Love that frog!

You could practice with my sound charts and make words with my sound cubes.

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/Resources/40LChartsCombined.pdf