This idea for letter recognition comes from Jan Richardson’s book The Next Step In Guided Reading. If you haven’t read the book DO IT! It’s a great book filled with tremendous research and ideas and strategies to make guided reading more effective!
I love this letter tracing ideas because it’s FAST, it’s simple and it works!!!!! I’ve been using this idea for about 3 years now and I must say that it is one of the most effective strategies for building letter recognition with students who need a little extra practice with their letters! This is most effective if students cannot name 40 uppercase and lowercase letters! (It’s in the book!)
They simply trace the letter with their finger while saying the name of the letter! BAM! 3-5 minutes is all it takes! You can do it during guided reading time (in the book it says not to…it says to use volunteers…but if you don’t have volunteers…) or you can pull the students when you have an extra minute! Last year I did it during breakfast in the classroom! When a student finished breakfast, they came to me and did their letter tracing!
Click the picture to get our letter tracing book! This one uses the same clipart that we use in our morning letter/sound chart! This clipart also goes with the Dr. Jean song, Alphardy which we sing every morning! This provides great consistency in our letters and sounds and images! And we know how important consistency is in our classrooms!!!
If you would like the original book that is seen in the video, CLICK HERE!
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