Teaching letter sounds in alphabetical order is an outdated practice - it needs to stop! Long gone (should be) the days where teachers spent a week on teaching each letter of the alphabet, starting from A, ending with Z. We already know the result of that kind of teaching - millions of Americans fail to read fluently by Grade 3. Some learn, for sure, but for the great majority, these methods fail.
Think about this, what can a child read knowing "ABCD" vs. TMSA? Take a look below - which letters are more helpful to a beginning reader?
abcd tmsa
bad mat
add sam
baa sat
cab at
as
am
mats
We want to get readers reading as soon as we can. The earlier we can get them to be successful, the better attitude they are going to have towards reading. So, by teaching letters that form the most words, we boost their success.
Different high quality program use different orders, but generally they have the same letters sounds loaded in the front of the program. Use my Watercolor Phonics Cards in one of these orders for fastest results. I thought I had them in teaching order in one of the files, but I may have to go and update.
Here's to not making reading any harder for our kids than it needs to be!!
My preferred method (from Phonics to Reading - Blevins)
m, a, s, t, p, n, i, c, ck, f, d, h, o, r, b, l, e, g, w, w, v, u, j, q, y, z, final e vowels, l blends, s blends, r blends, digraphs, ai, ay, ee, ea, oa, ow, y, igh, u, ew, ue, r-controlled vowels, oo, diphthongs, complex vowels
Examples of two other strong programs (taken from research of Blevins)
