Since teaching at a public school, I have adapted the value of a whole language approach to literacy education into my teaching philosophy.
Gone are they days of "a letter a week" with
good reason and research to back up this change!
Instead, we focus on all letters when we explore them, uppercase and lowercase, either together in words like
names of those we love or in environmental print.
Writing becomes meaningful as she watches me write in real life situations and I can point out the letters I use in grocery lists, birthday cards, and labeling the pictures we draw. ("Luke starts with L like (our last name)!" she said last weekend while insisting that she "draw (write) Star Wars names.")
We talk about letters and their sounds simultaneously. We
write, find, name, and sort letters every day in both structured and naturally occurring activities. When we do a literacy activity, we might look for the letter E, but we aren't only focusing on the letter Ee in isolation all week.
For homeschooling, this allows me to let my daughter set the pace. She already knows several letters. She can incorporate the success of the letters she does know into the study of 2 or 3 new and unfamiliar ones per letter play session. When I noticed she was confusing K and X, we started discussing the shape of the two letters (which are similar). I also made the X meaningful to her because it is the first letter of the name of one of her very best friends. In a public or private classroom, this prevents you from holding several students who know half the alphabet back while you spend a week on the letter A.
We won't wait to start pre-reading skills for when E has mastered all letters of the alphabet. You might be surprised that your child is reading
sight words in the time it would have taken you to do 26 weeks of Letter of the Week!
Thanks for the shout out! Your daughter is so lucky to have such an involved and dedicated parent :)
ReplyDeleteI had planned to do a letter of the week this year, but after looking into more found the researching arguing that it wasn't especially helpful and, like you said, kids learn better by seeing the letters in context rather than just the letter on its own. So instead we have lots of alphabet toys (magnets, puzzles, books) and we point out letters if we notice them on a store sign or something. It's much more low-key and I think that's worked well for us. I'm glad you found it works for your daughter too!
ReplyDeleteCouldn't agree more!!
ReplyDeleteI think this is so true and is why we keep our Letter of the Week experience loose and open. I've used it mainly as a way for me to structure activities for my 2.5 year-old, who actually already can recognize most of his letters consistently despite the fact that we are technically right now on "n."
ReplyDeleteIt has been helpful for me to structure sensory explorations around themes, so I focus on a letter and come up with activities related to each of the five senses for that letter. However, since we're very loose about it, sometimes we often have lots of letters at hand and circle between different activities and always point out letters in their natural environments, which I found to have been the most useful thing with both of my sons. Doing our tot school activities often with preschool big brother involved means we're often pointing out other letters as we focus on how letters come together to create words. I think it's absolutely important to explore all of the letters in multiple ways and am glad that I haven't taken a rigid approach to utilizing letters to help me structure my activities.
We do something similar to this.. While we don't isolate letters we still have a letter of the week. We usually do a couple of activities specific to the letter (ie. a sticker collage with the letter of the week) but we also use the other letters (ie. sorting items that start with "B" from items that start with "M"). When reading or playing we talk about all the different letters. So he's been introduced to every letter and we talk about all of them but each week we do a few activities to focus on a specific letter.
DeleteThis is what I love about homeschool. With my daughter a letter of the week is what works. I've tried doing it differently but it wasn't working. . .she loves and thrives on taking it one letter at a time (and building upon that). ..but with my son he thrived on doing all the letters at once. :) It's fun to watch kids learn and see how differently they pick up stuff in their own way.
ReplyDeleteI don't teach my daughter "letter of the week" either. I teach all of them at the same time, starting when my daughter was about 2 weeks old. At the beginning, I just introduced the letter to her, one by one. Latter I put them in words. Most of the time, we just play for fun. She can recognized all of the 26 letters at around the age of 13 months. I am so happy about it. Now I am teaching her words, which is much more difficult. Is there any tips about teaching words? I appreciate any tip :)
ReplyDeleteTips for teaching a 13 mo old words?! DON'T! She's barely older than an infant! She must be your first baby, but I'd say just chill and let her be a baby. She has TONS of time to learn her words. There's really no proven advantage to making them learn them super young anyway. :)
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