Learning letter names and sounds can be a tricky process for English Language Learners. There are 54 letter forms in the English language–26 uppercase and 28 lowercase (including typeset “a” and “g”)–that students need to master in order to become successful readers and writers. Even trickier, many of the letters in the English language change their sounds depending on their positions in words.

city/crab

bridge/gate

yellow/many

According to Marie Clay, a psychologist and researcher from New Zealand, students learn letters at their own pace and in no particular sequence. The alphabet is simply a way of organizing letters, not an order by which letters can, or should, be learned. How quickly ELLs learn letters and letter sounds is influenced by prior knowledge and experience, age, schooling (if any), and other factors. In short, it’s personal.

Clay notes that learning the entire alphabet is overwhelming. Visual recognition of letter features builds up slowly, and discoveries do not occur in alphabetical order. As learners tune in to letter features, they’ll begin to expend less energy on what they already know, freeing up their brains to take on new information.

One tool teachers can use to help students take on the alphabet task is an alphabet book. An alphabet book is a handmade, personalized record of letters that the student has mastered. This resource can be used to rehearse and extend students’ knowledge of letter names and link them to sounds in words.

Published "letter books" often contain an excessive number of images that are unknown to ELLs.  Additionally, these texts generally represent only one dialect of spoken English. Consider how the various North American accents affect vowels sounds, in particular. Trying to decipher these texts may further complicate an already daunting challenge. Unlike these published texts, a handmade alphabet book contains only one straightforward example that students can immediately recall. 

Getting started with an alphabet book is simple and can be made with supplies you may already have in your classroom. Follow the steps below to construct your own alphabet books and strengthen your students' letter knowledge with explicit, individualized instruction.

Alphabet books are not necessary for every student. Reserve alphabet books for students who are having difficulty identifying letters or distinguishing between letter sounds introduced in the classroom.

Administer a letter assessment of both upper and lowercase letters to determine what letters and/or letter sounds your students know. Letter assessments are readily available online and embedded in a variety of published assessment materials including, for example, Marie Clay's An Observational Survey of Early Literacy Achievement, Fountas and Pinnell's Benchmark Assessment System, the Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening for Kindergarten (PALS-K) and Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS).

ELLs with prior schooling already have some letter/sound knowledge in their home language. Note which letters and sounds are similar to English. For example, the letter "m" makes the /m/ sound in both English and Spanish. You might start by recording the letters of the sounds students know in the alphabet book.

Cardstock and plastic combs make the best alphabet books. Stapled, paper books tend to be bulky. Cardstock is heavier than paper and less likely to tear. Plastic combs (if you have a binding machine) make turning pages easy for little hands and allow the books to stay open without much effort. No binding machine? A ring of index cards will also do the trick!

Each page of the alphabet book is reserved for one letter pair–matching upper and lowercase letters–beginning with Aa and ending with Zz. Leave space for a small picture. For beginning readers, it's helpful to use landscape orientation to encourage left to right movement across the page.

Use your assessment to record only the letters the students knows in the book, leaving unknown letter pages blank. For example, the student below can recognize the letter "Ww," but not the letter "Xx."

Start building a library of images using resources you already have. A small file box with alphabet dividers is great way to store pictures for easy access. Many published language and literacy resources contain appendices and resources that can be cut and copied. Some of our favorites are the Appendix of Guided Reading, by Fountas and Pinnell and the Word by Word Basic Picture Dictionary by Molinsky & Bliss. You can also supplement your picture supply with clip art from the internet, magazines, and photographs of classmates or objects from around the school and home.

Be sure to include pictures and photos with environmental print. These can be familiar places and businesses in the local community or name brands of toys and games. Often these words are more familiar to our students than those in published sources. Be culturally responsive in your selection of images. Consider the experiences of your students.

To start, open the book to a page labeled with a known letter. Lay 3-4 pictures beginning with that same letter sound in front of the students. Ask them to choose their favorite. Pictures should be simple and match the experiences of the child, e.g. “boy”, “boat”, “bug” for Bb. It's imperative that we are "working with the child's memory store, not with the teacher's favourites," says Clay.

Ask the students (not you) to say the name of the picture they chose. Students may glue that picture into their alphabet books if and only if they know the name of the picture and if it does, in fact, start with that letter. For instance, if a student says “bunny” instead of “rabbit” for the letter “Rr”, ask her to choose a different picture, one that she can accurately associate with that letter.

Add additional letters to their reserved pages as you observe students recognizing them during lessons, in writing, or through assessment.

As noted above, some letter sounds transfer from one language to the next. For ELLs that have control of the letter sound, but not the name, you'll want to name the letter for them until they can do it independently. Students can glue in appropriate student-selected images for those letters as they learn the English words for them.

Students can read the alphabet book daily as a warm-up to the lesson, or as a “Familiar Read” to build letter-naming fluency.

I teach students to read each letter name and then the name of the picture ("R-r-rabbit”).

Some teachers might ask students to utter the sounds of the letters. Whichever way you choose, stick to it. Questioning your students about multiple features of the letters, such as their names, their sounds, which are curved, straight, etc. during the reading of the alphabet book can be overwhelming and may confuse young learners just beginning to distinguish letter forms.

The alphabet book is a tool that helps students link their letter knowledge in isolation to other reading, writing, and word work activities.

Provide opportunities for students to make a link between the letters and their sounds during Guided Reading or writing lessons. Use explicit prompting to connect the sounds to the student-selected pictures in their alphabet books. For example, say: "It says /g/ like 'goat' in your letter book," or, "It says /b/ like 'bike' in your letter book."

One of your instructional goals, for example, might be to teach students how to listen for and write the first sound they hear in words. During an Interactive Writing lesson, prompt students to link their known letters, recorded in the alphabet book, to the writing of new words. You may say, “The word ‘like’ goes here. ‘Like’ starts like ‘lion’ in your Alphabet Book.”

During a reading lesson, help students attend to letters in text by prompting them to self-correct. “Is it ‘rabbit’ or ‘bunny’? It starts like ‘run’ in your alphabet book, so it must be ‘rabbit’.”

A final note...
Avoid the temptation to clutter the alphabet book with additional vocabulary or word study notes. The purpose of the book is to offer students a way to distinguish or identify a letter from the other marks on a page. One simple image helps students make clear, direct links between letters and sounds.

Keep in mind that some of your students may not learn letter names and sounds at the same rate as other students in the class or in the order that you taught them. Reassure students that it takes time to build an alphabet book. Blank pages reassure students that learning is a personal process, and that it's OK to "skip over" a task that they're not yet ready to tackle. Your students will get a sense of accomplishment and progress as they watch the pages fill up with new learning.

An alphabet book can easily be integrated into your literacy routines. We have found this tool to be a simple and effective way to scaffold the learning of letters and sounds in English. Are you using alphabet books? We'd love to hear about it..share your experiences below!

Looking for a super power for teaching ELLs how to write? We've got great news. You don't need an expensive cape, superhuman strength or a magic wand. Shared and Interactive Writing are powerful tools for ALL students, but they are especially beneficial for students who are learning English. If you are not using Shared and Interactive Writing in your classroom, you'll be thrilled to know that these "super power" approaches do not require flashy materials, grand spaces, or extensive setups...and they can be executed successfully in a multitude of educational settings. Using Shared and Interactive Writing with ELLs looks a lot like it does with native English speakers, but with a few additional scaffolds.

Shared and Interactive Writing are tools teachers use to instruct children in the writing process. Building upon their observations about what children can already do, teachers coach students to record their thinking and experiences on the page, expanding their knowledge of English in the process. These experiences reinforce that writing has a purpose; it is a way to communicate thoughts and ideas to oneself and to others.

Although both Shared and Interactive Writing lessons involve the writing process, teachers approach each procedure with different goals in mind.

The goal of Shared Writing is reading. A process developed by Moira McKenzie, Shared Writing is a way for teachers and students to construct messages based on shared knowledge and experiences. Teachers elicit information and ideas from students. They help them organize and develop their thinking as they demonstrate how to record messages on paper. In the end, all participating students will be able to read the constructed text.

Teachers choose Shared Writing over Interactive Writing when they want to generate lengthy, or more complex, text in a shorter amount of time. Beginning writers record very slowly and often “forget” the messages they are writing. Shared Writing gives students a break from the physical act of writing, freeing them to expend their energy on the message and language of the text.

Shared Writing supports ELLs by:

• reinforcing and extending vocabulary and grammar structures
• developing comprehension of text through oral rehearsal and discussion
• providing physical demonstration of instructions and procedures
• providing a readable English text for all students 

When writing a story, for example, plan stopping places to reinforce comprehension through gestures or role play. Attach picture cards next to lines of text to cue the characters, setting, or problem in the story. When writing an evaluation or response, model facial expressions or place emojis in text to prompt emotion words and opinions. Create cloze texts to cue emotive vocabulary through context clues. And, in every lesson, point to keywords to build vocabulary knowledge and understanding.

In the experience pictured above, the class just completed an interactive read aloud of the The Three Billy Goats Gruff. During the reading, they annotated the text to show what the characters were thinking or feeling. Kim is using Shared Writing to record these text responses. As beginning language learners, these students have general language about the content (character names, emotions) and can speak in short phrases or simple sentences.

Teacher: (Pointing to the troll.) Who is this?
Students: (Shouting) The Troll!
Teacher: Yes! And the troll is very (making a mad face)...
Students: Mad!
Teacher: The troll is mad. Why is the troll mad?
Students: He no want goat on bridge. Go away!
Teacher: Yes! The goat is mad because he doesn't want the goat on the bridge.

The teacher has chosen Shared Writing in this instance to reinforce comprehension and expand the vocabulary and grammatical structures of the children. As the students negotiate the text, they repeatedly practice these structures orally. After the teacher scribes, the new learning will be reinforced as students read and revisit the text in the future.

POSSIBLE SHARED WRITING GOALS

• Reinforce content vocabulary
• Demonstrate order with transition words and phrases
• Use adjectives to describe an object
• Record a shared class experience, e.g. Field Trip
• Sequence events
• Create new story endings
• Write thank you notes and friendly letters

The goal of Interactive Writing is writing. Defined by McCarrier, Fountas, and Pinnell in Interactive Writing: How Language and Literacy Come Together, K-2, Interactive Writing is a “dynamic, collaborative literacy event in which children actively compose together, considering appropriate words, phrases, organization of text, and layout.” During Interactive Writing lessons, as in Shared Writing, teachers elicit information and ideas from students. However, during Interactive Writing lessons, children take on the role of writing apprentice. Teachers share the pen with a few students, guiding them as they record messages on the page.

Teachers choose Interactive Writing over Shared Writing when they want to teach students elements of the writing process, including the physical aspects of putting writing on paper. Teachers choose 1-2 memorable writing points to demonstrate and reinforce while the class composes a short piece of text. The class may revisit the text to build on the previous day's message.

Interactive Writing supports ELLs by:

• establishing word boundaries that may be difficult to distinguish when spoken
• providing immediate feedback and demonstration for writing attempts
• slowing the writing process and giving students additional "wait time" to negotiate new learning in English and in their home language(s)
• reinforcing what they know about letters, sounds and words in a variety of ways

During Interactive Writing, students can demonstrate their partial knowledge of letters through verbal or nonverbal means. Beginning writers, for example, may not yet be able to identify letters by their names, but can associate them with their sounds, locate them on an alphabet chart, or match them to keywords. Reinforce what they already know about the letter and add any new or partially known information (name, sound, word association). Prompt students to form letters on individual white boards while a volunteer writes on the chart.

In the Interactive Writing experience shown above, the teacher and students are writing an opinion about a folk tale read in class. The teacher chose Interactive Writing to reinforce the spellings of high frequency words to help students develop automaticity in writing. Small anchor charts are posted near the easel for quick student reference.

POSSIBLE INTERACTIVE WRITING GOALS

• Develop 1:1 correspondence
• Include spaces between words
• Hear and record sounds in words
• Recognize and record high frequency and sight words
• Reinforce content vocabulary
• Use inflectional endings
• Reinforce spelling patterns

Although Shared Writing and Interactive Writing have different procedures and goals, they can both be used to generate a single text. For example, teachers may scribe an introduction to an experiment, but share the pen when writing the steps.

In this mural, the teacher has used a combination of Shared and Interactive Writing to compare two versions of Goldilocks.  They used Shared Writing to generate the main idea. Interactive Writing was used to record the evidence.

Kindergarten students used Interactive Writing to create a mural of The Three Billy Goats Gruff.  The writing goals were beginning and ending sounds.  The teacher also wanted to reinforce word boundaries, so she used cut up sentence strip as labels to accentuate each word.

In this example, the class generated an original folk tale using the story structure and patterns in The Three Billy Goats Gruff. The teacher used Shared Writing so the students could focus on the structure and content, without becoming overwhelmed with spelling and conventions.

Whichever writing strategies you choose, explicit writing instruction reinforces language and literacy skills for all students.

Play is disappearing in elementary classrooms. While struggling to meet the demands of the Common Core, many kitchen sets, puppets and sand tables collect dust. Sigh. We know our learners need these experiences but how do we fit it all in?

With careful planning, modeling, and demonstration, co-teachers can provide young learners with opportunities that facilitate language acquisition and literacy skills through non-threatening, developmentally appropriate play.

We believe play is an integral part of the socio-emotional, physical, and cognitive development of children. Moreover, English learners (ELs) benefit from the role of play in language acquisition:

For children who are learning English, self-directed play establishes an informal, non-threatening atmosphere that is one of the most valuable ways of learning. When children are engaged in the process of play, they usually care very little about an end product. They are free to figure out what they want to do and when they want to do it. They engage in spontaneous activity. In other words, children are in control.  

-Burton and Edwards

This year, my kindergarten co-teacher and I (Jamie) scheduled our Integrated English as a New Language (ENL) block during playtime to maximize the benefit of language and literacy development through developmentally appropriate play.

My co-teacher plans opportunities for our kindergarten students to play during the school day. At the beginning of the year she set up play areas with the guidance of Debbie Diller’s Spaces and Places: Designing classrooms for literacy, and organized her schedule to ensure play happens each and every day!

She schedules literacy through play in the form of “Choice Time” during the first 40 minutes of the day. Once students unpack their backpacks and sign up for lunch they head over to the shelves to choose toys and materials. These bins contain matchbox cars, Legos, blocks, Play-doh, Tinker Toys and art materials.

This is not superficial play, but play with a purpose. In the report, Crisis in Kindergarten, Miller and Almon explain, "Kindergartners need a balance of child-initiated play in the presence of engaged teachers and more focused experiential learning guided by teachers."

Some students opt to role-play! With books and pointers they are teachers and moms and dads reading to their children.

We allow four students to each play area, to ensure they have enough materials to share and to keep down the noise level in the classroom. Following language from Responsive Classroom we teach students how to build friendships and navigate conflict. Students are shown how to care for toys and clean them up once playtime has ended. We also use role play to explore skillful communication. These charts are a few examples of student-initiated problem solving that are referred to often during playtime.

During playtime, we observe students at their work—building, role-playing, creating, problem-solving, reading, and writing. We join children in their play-— demonstrating, talking, and recording their language. This is a powerful time when we can expand their language through vocabulary development and teach them the purpose and power of the written word. We embrace a functional approach to language, focusing on how people —INCLUDING 5 YEAR OLDS—use real language for real purposes.

A typical "playdate" might sound something like this:

Student A: (Pointing to a ramp his group made out of blocks)...and this part goes down for the car. The car goes down this. 

Teacher: Oh, the ramp? The car can zoom down the ramp to get down. How about we build another ramp on this side? 

Student B: I want to make a ramp on my castle! 

Teacher: What a cool idea. We can write down how we did it, and you can follow the directions tomorrow during playtime.

Following this exchange, I'd pull the small group of students aside and use shared writing or interactive writing to write the procedure for building a ramp. I often take photos to capture their creations and use them to guide us during writing instruction.

From these play experiences, we've generated recounts, procedures, reports, opinions and other informational texts. The key is to get down on the carpet and put your best listening ears on. When I play with students, I keep a menu of literacy and language objectives in mind. These objectives are dictated by the genre of writing and the needs of my students. If I hear students arguing over which doll is the best, I'm thinking opinion writing! If I observe two students talking about losing their first tooth...recount! It's all about engaging with the kids and listening expectantly for opportunities to create texts that matter to the students and have a purpose in their world.

Here's a few Shared Writing examples our students generated from their play experiences.

Recount

       Information                                                Procedural

   (Play-doh discovery!)                                                

We also use Interactive Writing to compose texts. During Interactive Writing, the teacher and student share the pen. This approach allows us to teach and reinforce early literacy skills in context.

Opinion 

For more information on Shared and Interactive Writing, check out:

Interactive Writing

Check out www.allianceforchildhood.org and www.imaginationplayground.com for more information about the importance of play in schools.

Teaching literacy through play? Comment below and let us know about the amazing things happening in your classrooms!