Letter and letter-sound knowledge - Focused teaching Prep to year 2 (ages 5-8)

These teaching activities can be repeated to allow students to practise recognising and expressing simple rhyming units. The activities are presented in the following sequential developmental order.

Recognising and naming letters

This activity can be repeated to allow students to practise recognising and naming letters.

Instructions

1. Prepare a set of alphabet cards showing lower case letters.
   
2. Sort the cards into two piles – one containing letters that the student is familiar with and one containing letters that the student is less familiar with.
3. Ask the student to take letters from both piles and arrange them on a blank bingo grid.
4. Play bingo with the student, asking them to name and remove the letters from their grid after they have been read out.
   
5. Repeat this process using upper case letters.
   

Increasing complexity and practice

These activities provide additional opportunities for students to practise recognising and naming letters.

• Use different proportions of familiar and unfamiliar letters or a mixture of lower and upper case letters.
  
• Before removing a letter from their grid, ask the student to suggest a word or words that start with the letter.
  

Recognising sounds of letters in words

This activity can be repeated to allow students to practise recognising sounds of letters in words.

Instructions

1. Show the student a word that begins with a known letter. For example, a word that begins with the letter ‘d’ such as ‘door’.
   
2. Read the word to the student, describing the sound the letter makes at the beginning of the word. For example, say to the student: '"Door". The letter "d" in "door" makes a "d" sound.'
3. Ask the student to repeat this process by saying the name of the word and describing the sound the letter makes at the beginning of the word.
   
4. Ask the student to draw or find pictures of other objects where the letter ‘d’ makes the same sound at the beginning of a word. For example, the student may draw or find pictures of a duck, a dinosaur, a dog or a doll.
   

Increasing complexity and practice

This activity provides additional opportunities for students to practise recognising sounds of letters in words.

• Use words where the target letter makes the same sound at the end of the word. For example, words where the letter ‘d’ makes a 'd' sound such as hand, bird, bread and mud.
  

This activity can be repeated to allow students to practise identifying letters in a given text.

Instructions

1. Ask the student to create a sentence that relates to their own experience. For example, the student may say: ' My rabbit sleeps under a tree in the garden.'
   
2. Transcribe the sentence onto a computer or other digital device.
   
3. Select a target letter in lower or upper case. Ask the student to locate where the letter occurs within the sentence and change its colour. For example:
   
• My rabbit sleeps under a tree in the garden.
• My sister wanted to play with Mark and Molly

4. Repeat this process using other lower and upper case letters.
   

Increasing complexity and practice

These activities provide additional opportunities for students to practise identifying letters in a given text. 

• Ask the student to locate the target letter in more complex sentences or paragraphs.
• Ask the student to locate both lower and upper case forms of the target letter within a text.

These activities can be repeated to allow students to practise writing letters in lower and upper case.

Undertaking the movement of writing helps students see and feel how each letter is formed, enhancing their ability to recognise letters and store them in their visual memory for future identification.

Practising writing letters also provides students with opportunities to talk about the names and features of the letters and the sounds they represent in words.

Instructions

• Model the correct formation of a lower case letter to the student. Explain how you are forming the letter by discussing the starting and finishing points, direction and number of strokes.
  
• Ask the student to practise writing the target letter and prompt them to discuss how the letter is formed.
  
• Once the student has practised writing the target letter using the correct letter formation, ask them to write it in the context of a known word.
  
• Repeat this process using other lower and upper case letters. To practise writing upper case letters in the context of a known word, use proper nouns such as familiar places or names.

Increasing complexity and practice

This activity provides additional opportunities for students to practise writing letters in lower and upper case.

• Ask the student to write the target letter in the context of a familiar sentence. For example: 'My _abbit sleeps under the t_ee in the ga_den.'
  

These activities can be repeated to allow students to practise predicting a word in a sentence by using its first letter.

Instructions

1. Ask the student to read and complete sentences using the meaning and structure of the sentence and the first letter of the last word as a prompt. For example: ‘The cat was chasing the m____.'
   

Increasing complexity and practise

This activity provides additional opportunities for students to practise predicting a word in a sentence by using the meaning and structure of the sentence and the first letter of the word.

• Change the position of the missing word in the sentence. For example: 'I r___ my bike to school.'