Teaching letter sounds before letter names, has anyone done this?

[A home for their hearts]

I just finished reading Ruth Beechick's "A Home Start in Reading" and I'm a little unsure of the way she suggests teaching beginning reading. I would have never thought of teaching the sounds before the letter names, but it does make since. You don't need to know that an A is an A to read, you need to know what sound it makes. I'm debating on using this method with my ds4 but wanted to get some feed back on it. Currently my ds4 only knows a couple of letters by name, none by sound.

[swellmomma]

That's what I am doing with Jolly Phonics with ds. The only down side to it so far is in writing. He wants me spell words out loud for him to write but he only knows the sounds the letters make not the names so we are backtracking and teaching both now. We are only like 5 letters into the program so that makes it easier to backtrack.

[Guest]

This is what SWR recommends, as well. I had already started teaching ds the names, but we switched over to sounds. It hasn't been confusing at all. We're going to teach sounds to dd (2). Of course, we do the traditional ABC song, though.

[jolley]

I used "A Home Start in Reading" with ds' #2 & #3. It has worked wonderfully. They loved flash cards though and we learned letter names from those. Dd and ds #1 learned more traditionally. (Both letter and sound at the same time) They are ALL good readers. I guess it just depends on what works best for the child.

[Ellie]

Spalding and its look-alikes do exactly that.

[mktyler]

The reason is that some children will confuse the letter names and sounds. This will slow their acquisition of smooth blending as they are apt to make more errors while reading. As an earlier poster suggested, some children will not have trouble with this. Conscientious program designers address this to eliminate an easy source of confusion and help more kids move along more quickly.

 

Melissa

Minnesota

Reading Program Junkie

dd(10) dd(6) ds(4) ds(1)

[abbeyej]

Yep, I don't *avoid* letter names, but what I *teach* are sounds. Both of my kids are strong readers and know their letter names just fine now. ;)

[Avila]

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons also takes this approach. This is my third child, but it is the first time I have used this book, and it is going pretty well. She seems to be picking up the letter names pretty naturally.

[Cornerstone Classical]

I had never read any educ. books. But when my ds was 3 we would play a game every night while I rocked baby sister to sleep. I would say to him A /a/, /a/, /a/, apple and so on thru the alphabet. Then we would change it around I would ask "What makes the /b/ sound in /b/, /b/, ball?" And he would say "b". We only did it for a couple of months. Shortly before his 4th birthday, he came to me and read a book to me. I fell in the floor in shock, I couldn't believe he could read. He had remembered our game and used his common sense to read words. He had forced himself to read prompts on a Nancy Drew Computer game to acutally play it. Yeah, all that time I thought he was just pushing buttons on the computer, "pretending" to play the game, but he was actually teaching himself to read! Shortly before he was 4 I gave him an online reading test and he scored 6th grade. I'm sure he is well beyond that now. Needless to say, He's 7 now and can read anything and comprehend as well.

[Jumping In Puddles]

ABeCeDarian also teaches letter sounds before names.

 

Makes sense, BUT my dc learned the letter names and sounds in about a week after watching the Letter Factory.

 

It doesn't make sense for me to go through a phonics program teaching what all the letters say (or named) because they get it so ridiculously easily from the video.

[Janet in Toronto]

Montessori pedagogy teaches letter sounds first. Or maybe ONLY letter sounds. I don't remember my sons (who did early education in a Montessori school) ever learning letter names at school, or at best, informally.

[bethben]

I am teaching my 4 1/2 year old son to read right now. He learned letter sounds first mostly from the best video of all times - Leap Frog Letter Factory. So, when he looks at a letter, he says the sound not the letter name. His progress to reading has been incredibly smooth. Much smoother than his brother who I taught the names of letters first. I am going to have to teach him the names also now, but it seems to be working well.

Beth

[TheCoffeeChick]

I think teaching the sounds is a great idea, but kids do pick up the names anyways. My ds at 2 would say the sound of the letter when you asked him what one was, but he knew the ABC song. It was not how I taught him, we would always say the name and sound of a letter when talking about them. This is a B and B says buh ... But he would always call the letter by the sound, "hey look mom a buh" :)

 

He also would call a cow a moo and a pig an oink, not by their name, but by the sound they made:tongue_smilie:?!?!?

 

He outgrew it though and now calls everything by the name. Just a phase, I guess.

[St. Theophan Academy]

I have done both ways - my son learned the letter names at a preschool, then the sounds in homeschool, my daughter learned sounds first, and did not know letter names until well into first grade after she was reading. The way I see it, either way works, the benefits of sounds first allow less confusion for child in beginning, but can be problematic when seeing the pediatrician (eye tests and even just basic questions they ask to determine progress in a child - it is always fun to explain to the pediatrician that your 7 year old cannot identify her ABC's because you homeschool and you haven't taught letter names yet :), adds a complication for a child who is starting music lessons (my daughter was very embarrased at her first piano lesson at age 6 because she did not know the names of the letters A-G for the music notes - we had to teach those before she was reading), and of course, it can cause a lot of eye raising from other parents and other kids who will make fun of a child who cannot name letters or spell their name at the age of 6 or 7.

My son did have a bit of difficulty at first understanding the difference between the name of a letter and the sounds it makes, but really - it was no harder for him to get past that than it was to teach my 7 year old the names of the letters :) So, I think whichever way you do it, it will probably be fine! This is one of those issues I think we home schoolers get bogged down on (like ecclesiastical v classical pronunciation, or cursive v print first, or which font to teach) that in the long run does not matter and is not worth the stress - just pick a direction and stick with it - if you have a very sensitive child, or one who is very affected by peer pressure, I would advise teaching the names just to prevent the teasing that might occur - if you have a strong independent child who doesn't care what others say - go for it with the sounds. :)

[inashoe]

I did this with my first three, all with great success.

I also first read Ruth Beechicks books and started that way with all of them.

Once they knew their letter sounds, or most of them, then I started working on blending.

They aren't ready to learn to read until they can blend - start out with little words like 'am'.

Once they could sound these out, then I went onto use Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons

The names of the letters comes quickly and easily once they are already reading.

My kids are now all strong readers, and I don't say this is the reason, but it certainly did work well with them.

[dragons in the flower bed]

We had flashcards, I think, or something some relative had given us. I remember that the kiddo had gotten into a stack of stuff I had put away to get rid of, and the flashcards were in it. Kiddo used to get a huge kick out listening to me make funny sounds for each card. By age three, this same kid was not yet talking, but pointing to letters and giving me that quizzical look. By four we finally had talking -- and reading. Sometime after that, in handwriting workbooks, I taught the names of the letters.

 

Probably an atypical kid, but teaching letter sounds first certainly didn't do any harm.

[SquirrellyMama]

We did this with our now 5 year old. The only thing that was hard was having people ask him to say the alphabet and then giving me looks like I wasn't doing my job. I just wanted to say, "Ask him his letter sounds!". He has perfected the alphabet names just this year.

 

One thing we do when the kids ask us to spell something is to sound out the word anyway. I know someone said something about this being a problem. I made sure when learning the sounds they could associate it with the letter.

 

Kelly

[ElizabethB]

I used to think it was better to teach the sounds first, then the letters...but, even when I thought that, I found it nearly impossible to talk about the letters without saying their names, so I ended up pretty much teaching both even though I didn't intend to.

 

Now, I think that letter names are important and should be taught at the same time. Leapfrog letter factory teaches them both easily, just plug in the movie. I also like the phraseology, "The p says puh, the p says puh, every letter makes a sound, the p says puh." That makes it pretty clear that each letter has both a name and a sound. If a 2 year old can understand and say that a sheep says baa, an older beginning reading student should be able to understand and say that the letter p says puh.

 

I taught my daughter both, but we worked a lot more with the sounds when she was learning phonics, and since she started young, she was still at the age where they think out loud. She thought of each of the letters by the sound she had been taught in leapfrog, even when she was doing a letter team like oa that she knew made the sound of long o, when writing the word boat, she would say "buh," "ah" "/a/ (short a sound)," "tuh" to herself.

 

Many of my remedial students don't know all the names of the letters, I think that hinders them as well as their lack of phonics knowledge and their guessing habits from too many sight words.

[AnneC]

My first three learned their letter sounds first. They learned the letter names when they started asking about spelling. My youngest is learning both because her siblings don't subscribe to the same philosophy as me and teach her the letter names too:tongue_smilie:

[Spy Car]

I am teaching my 4 1/2 year old son to read right now. He learned letter sounds first mostly from the best video of all times - Leap Frog Letter Factory.

 

:iagree:

 

While part of me "cringes" at the thought of recommending *videos* to teach children, the Leapfrog Letter Factory (and the follow ups Talking Word Factory and Talking Word Factory) are SO OUTSTANDING that I've pressed the idea on everyone I know with young children. They are GREAT!!!

 

Bill

[Aurelia]

We taught letter sounds first. Ariel knows the letter names, but doesn't generally use them. She even spells by letter sound, which is fine with me until she is reading fluently. I think it has really helped her reading because she doesn't have to go through C says /c/ as in cookie, A says /a/ as in apple, T says /t/ as in tiger to read, she just says /c/ /a/ /t/ ....cat.

[laughing lioness]

I did this with one child and it was a disaster.

[IsabelC]

We taught the sounds first with all the kids. We didn't need to teach the letter names; they seemed to magically pick them up on their own, probably from hearing other people spell things out.

[SorrelZG]

Sounds first here, too.

[tomandlorih]

:iagree:

 

While part of me "cringes" at the thought of recommending *videos* to teach children, the Leapfrog Letter Factory (and the follow ups Talking Word Factory and Talking Word Factory) are SO OUTSTANDING that I've pressed the idea on everyone I know with young children. They are GREAT!!!

 

Bill

:iagree:Yup, ds3.5 is learning with these right now. It's a mixture of letter sounds and names but I don't think it's confusing to him.

[AndyJoy]

I avoided letter names with my son by asking, "What sound does this letter make?" or simply pointing and saying, "What sound?" rather than asking, "What sound does the B make?"

 

Yep, Leapfrog Letter Factory is awesome. Due to Spy Car's glowing recommendation I let my son watch this as his first video when he was 18 months old. He watched it a few times a week while I made dinner and by 19 months he knew 19 letter sounds and the rest by 2. Now at almost 3, he has figured out the names as well and is sounding out 3-letter words. He's just recently started singing the ABC song--not knowing it before certainly hasn't hampered his reading!

[Guest mom2my2]

I absolutely did this with both my kids. When they were learning that a cow says moo, I figured they could learn what an a says. My son was a natural early reader. My daughter is 2.5 and knows the sounds of all her lower and upper case letters. She also knows her animals sounds too. ;)

 

I just finished reading Ruth Beechick's "A Home Start in Reading" and I'm a little unsure of the way she suggests teaching beginning reading. I would have never thought of teaching the sounds before the letter names, but it does make since. You don't need to know that an A is an A to read, you need to know what sound it makes. I'm debating on using this method with my ds4 but wanted to get some feed back on it. Currently my ds4 only knows a couple of letters by name, none by sound.

[...................]

Yes. Both of my kids were taught letter sounds first. It makes sense and it works.

[Matryoshka]

I used Reading Reflex, which also recommends letter sounds rather than letter names.

 

However, I was unable to do this in practice, as I read and started RR with them sometime around 4/4.5, and all my kids knew all their letter names by the time they were 2... whoopsie! :tongue_smilie:

[Matryoshka]

One thing we do when the kids ask us to spell something is to sound out the word anyway. I know someone said something about this being a problem. I made sure when learning the sounds they could associate it with the letter.

 

Why would that be a problem? I always did that, up to a year before I actually started teaching them to read, when they started being interested in spelling their names or other simple words. I'd make them sound out the word, sound by sound, then I'd tell them the letter or combination of letters associated with that sound in that word. This gave them a big head start when they started learning to read, and it was fun for them.

[FO4UR]

I taught both sounds and letter names at the same time, but separately.

 

 

We sang the ABC song and played ABC puzzles, and the letter names cam quite quickly through that. (Watch Sesame street, etc...)

 

 

When it came time to actually learn to read, I never asked for letter names. I asked for sounds. If they gave me a letter name, I'd say "Yes, it's a T. What does the T say?" We practice the automatic symbol-to-sound response...and it doesn't matter one bit if they actually know the letter name for the purpose of reading. (Though mine picked up the letter names without my having to actually teach it.)

 

 

 

LeapFrog Letter Factory teaches both quickly. It's worth every penny and every moment those annoying little songs are going through *your* head.;)

[angelmama1209]

my 4.5yo is naturally learning only the sounds. if i ask her what a specific letter is, she can't tell me, but if i ask what it says, she can.

 

And is my 2nd child the ONLY one who didn't learn from letter factory? my oldest learned at age 2 after 2x watching. my 4yo has seen it a hundred times and still doesn't know it. She's so sick of it, she now leaves the room whenever someone puts it on. :/

[Hilltop]

Yep, I don't *avoid* letter names, but what I *teach* are sounds. Both of my kids are strong readers and know their letter names just fine now. ;)

 

:iagree:

 

It was hard to avoid the letter names completely.

[MomatHWTK]

My kids have all learned from Leap Frog also. (Guess this will be the Leap Frog generation. LOL) The technique in the video is to go ahead and say what the letter is called, but then to emphasize what sound it makes. So it teaches "The 'A' says /a/, The 'A' says /a/, every letter has a sound, The 'A' says /a/ " and so forth.

 

My littlest will point to a letter and usually say its sound first, sometimes its name and sound. I've noticed that many ABC books just teach the names of the letters, when we read those I would just add the extra sound information as it fit into the story.

[AngelBee]

This is what I have been doing with ds7 and under and I am LOVING the results!

 

Dd10 and ds12 still struggle with phonics and spelling. :(

[FloridaLisa]

Lol, I did this with one of mine after watching my friend's dd learn this way in Montessori preschool. It wreaked havoc on his eye exam at his yearly check-up! :001_smile: Otherwise, it worked well and he's a voracious reader.

 

Lisa

[redsquirrel]

That is how I taught reading. I used Reading Reflex so it worked very, very well.

 

My friend who is a certified reading tutor highly recommended it. She said to imagine you were in a room meeting 26 people. They all walk up to you and say things like "Hi, my name is Katherine, but you can call me Katy." "Hi, my name is William, but you can call me Bobby." It gets confusing. Many letter names do start with the sound, and if a kid has trouble with sounds they can 'guess' from the name. For example, she told me many kids will guess that an 'X" is the picture of the sound "eh" because that is how the letter name starts.

 

When my children were babies and toddlers I started introducing letters by their sounds, not names. We had letter magnets and a "T" was called by its sound. An "S" was as well. They were both learning to read at 3.5 years old and needed very little formal instruction. I started them with Reading Reflex and they just took off. They knew the basic code and were ready for advanced code by age 4.

[Tanikit]

My elder DD learnt only the sounds - she picked up the letter names through Starfall and by singing the alphabet song well after she knew all the sounds. If asked what a letter is now she still gives only the main sound. She has now started writing and I just reinforce phonics rules and give her the letters for combinations. When teaching the silent E rule and also other long vowels I did have to back track a bit before starting them and make sure she knew the names (ie the long sounds) of the vowels.

Edited July 30, 2012 by Tanikit

[brendag]

My kids loved the little Leapfrog bus with the letters all over it. It included the names and sounds, but they definitely knew the names first. Of course that was before I even thought about homeschooling. It hasn't hurt one bit though as far as I can tell and we are halfway through their phonics program (they are almost 5).

 

They also loved Leapfrog Letter Factory. I too don't push tv/vids on kids, but this is wonderful at getting those sounds down pat! :001_smile:

 

Brenda

[RootAnn]

And is my 2nd child the ONLY one who didn't learn from letter factory? my oldest learned at age 2 after 2x watching. my 4yo has seen it a hundred times and still doesn't know it. She's so sick of it, she now leaves the room whenever someone puts it on. :/

 

My five year old loves watching the videos, but hasn't picked up any sounds or letter names from it. It'll eventually make sense ... but perhaps after I've taught him everything "manually." :tongue_smilie:

 

Perhaps she's not a visual/auditory learner & needs to learn kinestically?

[angelmama1209]

My five year old loves watching the videos, but hasn't picked up any sounds or letter names from it. It'll eventually make sense ... but perhaps after I've taught him everything "manually." :tongue_smilie:

 

Perhaps she's not a visual/auditory learner & needs to learn kinestically?

 

exactly! just haven't found the way to do it yet.

[happycc]

I am not "teaching" him any of it yet as I am so busy with the older ones.

 

But he hears our AAS lessons with the sounds and then he hears my older ones put the board back together again saying the alphabet as they put the tiles back in order.

 

I hear him repeat A-a-Ah etc as I flash the phonogram cards to the older ones and then I just for fun said to him " Can you put these tiles in order for me?" and he started to put tiles away (not in order) and randomly saying ABCDEF....

 

Who knows-maybe I won't have to teach him much in a year or so? He has learned everything via osmosis.

[redsquirrel]

exactly! just haven't found the way to do it yet.

 

Sprinkle some flour on a cookie sheet and have the child draw the letter in the flour while making the sound.

 

Or use rice. Or sandpaper letters. Or do it in shaving cream.

[kubiac]

:iagree:

 

While part of me "cringes" at the thought of recommending *videos* to teach children, the Leapfrog Letter Factory (and the follow ups Talking Word Factory and Talking Word Factory) are SO OUTSTANDING that I've pressed the idea on everyone I know with young children. They are GREAT!!!

 

Bill

 

FWIW, my favorite vid for teaching letter NAMES/recognition to little kids is Signing Time ABC Signs. The combination of music and movement is magical.

 

Kiddo learned the ABC song from the Leap Frog Fridge Phonics machine (when all else fails, push the button that makes the noise!), and I wish I had a similar button for a counting song.

Edited August 1, 2012 by kubiac