As children are developing their Phonemic Awareness they will also start to develop their knowledge of letter names and sounds. Phonemic Awareness starts to develop as children become aware of spoken language and continues to and through 2nd grade at the most complex levels. If anyone (child or adult) does not develop all the necessary Phonemic Awareness skills, they can still and always be learned and this will strengthen that individual’s reading fluency.

Letter names and sounds are the foundation of learning to read, which again is NOT a natural thing for our brains to learn. The brain repurposes part of its language centers for learning to read written language. Letter names and sounds is the one part of reading that is visual in learning and remembering. Word recognition is based on meaning, but letter recognition is based on sight.

This means that letter recognition takes hundreds, if not thousands, of exposures to the letters. It is also important to expose your child or student to multiple fonts and cursive and print versions of the letters and to work on both upper and lower case letters as they are learning the letter names and sounds. There are various ideas of whether students should learn letter names or sounds first. This is because children need the sounds to read, but they only need the names for spelling. And spelling is a later skill than reading.

One idea is that they should learn them simultaneously and that they should learn all the sounds for each letter at the same time. This is the one that makes the most sense to me. I like this idea because several letter sounds are an alliteration to their names. This means that the beginning of the letter sound is the same as the beginning sound of the letter name like /d/and d, /t/ and t, /b/ and b. So, learning both together strengthens sound recognition for several letters. Some that are confusing based on alliteration are c and g, but if you are teaching both soft and hard sounds from the beginning it becomes easier. The letter c has the hard sound /k/ which is not an alliteration, but it also has the soft sound /s/ which is an alliteration. *The letter g is the same way, it says it’s hard sound /g/ when it comes before an a, o, u, or any consonant and it says it’s soft sound /j/ when it comes before an e, i, or y (that is the same rules as the letter c). And although the letter g’s hard sound is not an alliteration with it’s name, it’s soft sound is. *There are some exceptions to the spelling rule mentioned above, but the better you know the rules of English the fewer exceptions there are.

I also agree that it is good to teach students all of the sounds a letter can make from the beginning. This means teaching soft and hard c and g sounds, long and short vowel sounds. When I first read this, I felt that this would just be confusing and too much for young children. However, as I navigate reading with my daughters it is showing as a better and better idea. For my oldest who needs a LOT of repetition and is very literal, being taught all sounds and when to use them from the beginning would have strengthened her knowledge of all the sounds with the repetitions as she was learning to read. With my youngest who is able to read higher and harder texts than she’s been “taught” to read, having automaticity with the multiple sounds of letters would “unlock” those tricky words for her.

So, I advocate for teaching children both the letter names and sounds, individually, but at the same time. This means I would teach them their letter names with multiple fonts and as many repetitions as possible. And then I would also work with them on sounds with multiple fonts and as many repetitions. I would not teach them to read a card A says /a/ and do the letter name and sound simultaneously. It needs to be clear to the child that there is a difference between name and sound and you should ask them for one type of skill at a time. You can ask for the name of one letter when you show a card and then switch to ask for the sound of the next card after repeatedly practicing with both skills.

I also advocate for teaching children ALL of the sounds a letter can make and which is the most common from the very beginning. They should know that c USUALLY says /k/. But if the word you’re reading doesn’t make sense with /k/, it also says /s/ and you can try that sound. It just gives them more options as they are sounding things out and builds an unconscious knowledge of the rules for when it says what. The child may start to see that certain letters follow each sound. Then as you teach the rule they already have a frame of reference for it, or a word that comes to mind as a example of the rule.

I hope this information is helpful in understanding how our brains learn this information and the purposes it serves. Please let me now what you have experienced in helping children read and share any tips that you have found helpful! I am always eager to learn!