By the end of the school year, I want my 4 and 5 year olds to be able to look at a letter (capital and lowercase are shown together on a card with a picture), name it, make the letter sound, and give a word association with the same initial sound.
(Filmed in November, 2007) My 4 year olds practice the alphabetic code in a physically active, visual, and auditory cheer/chant-like morning routine. After 4 years of teaching 4 and 5 year olds, 92/100 children were able to recall and identify 26 letters at 80% accuracy or higher. Eighty-one out of 100 children were able to recall and produce 31 (including short and long vowel sounds) letter sounds at 80% or higher accuracy.
I find that the active physical part of the activity helps children recall the name of the letter, proving visual recognition, and the sound it makes because a multi-sensory technique is reviewed everyday. The child's preferred or stronger learning modality is activated, and then it helps to support and strengthen the other modalities. Learning can not be isolated into separate learning modalities; however, by incorporating multiple senses, the stronger modality helps to become a sort of mnemonic device for the desired information and then attaches it to the associated information that is a little more difficult to recall. (I theorize that the other modalities are not as developed, but they will also need to be activated for reading). Less