Shayne Piasta discusses best practices for teaching alphabet knowledge. She tells us what the research suggests about teaching letter names and sounds, why teaching a letter of the week may not be the most effective approach, and an order to teach letters. The best part? She shares concrete ideas and strategies for classroom practice.
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Helping teachers learn about science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curriculum.
Shayne Piasta discusses best practices for teaching alphabet knowledge. She tells us what the research suggests about teaching letter names and sounds, why teaching a letter of the week may not be the most effective approach, and an order to teach letters. The best part? She shares concrete ideas and strategies for classroom practice.
Takeaways
Resources
We wrote a book! The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night
Don't miss an episode! Sign up for FREE bonus resources and episode alerts at LiteracyPodcast.com
Helping teachers learn about science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curriculum.
You're listening to Melissa and Lori Love Literacy. Teaching the alphabet to our youngest students can seem like a simple task, but there are so many things to consider. Do you focus on letter names or sounds first? Which order did you introduce the letters? How long do you spend on each letter? Today, we'll be talking to professor and researcher Shayne Piasta about what the research says about alphabet instruction.
Lori:Hi teacher friends. I'm Lori and I'm Melissa. We are two educators who won the best for all kids, and we know you do too.
Melissa:We work together in Baltimore when the district adopted a new literacy curriculum.
Lori:We realized there was so much more to learn about how to teach reading and writing.
Melissa:Lori, and I can't wait to keep learning with you today.
Lori:Hi everyone, we're so excited because today we are going all in on alphabet instruction and we will learn what the research says and, in some cases, what it doesn't say.
Melissa:And we're here today with Shayne Piasta, who is a professor at the Ohio State University and she researches preschool and elementary literacy development. So, shane, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for having me.
Lori:Yeah, thank you for being here. Yeah, we're especially excited, shane, to dig into some questions about early alphabet learning, and I think we're talking about preschool and early kindergarten. There are some debates about exactly how students should learn the alphabet, the letters, the sounds. We can't wait to hear from you what has a research base and what doesn't, what are best practices and really what we do know about what works in the classroom.
Melissa:Yeah, so we'll start off with a big one which I hear a lot about, which is what should we focus on first? Letter names or letter sounds, and I've heard people be very firmly in their camp of which one we should start with. So we want to hear from you what does the research say about this?
Shayne Piasta:Yeah, so for this question we actually do have empirical evidence, both from my research group as well as another group led by Teresa Roberts, and in that work it's really suggesting that we teach both names and sounds to young children simultaneously. So instead of doing all the letter names first and then going back and doing the letter sounds or doing all of the letter sounds and exclusively focusing on letter sounds For kids in the US, where we do refer to letters by name pretty frequently, the evidence really suggests we should be teaching those names as well as those sounds and always pairing those up so kids are getting both of those associations each time we're working with a letter.
Melissa:I was thinking about that. A lot of little kids I mean my little one picked up the alphabet. I don't even know where from. He was in daycare, I think. They just I don't know if they really taught it or just sang the song or what, but he just knew the alphabet. So he knew a lot of the letter names before we even started talking about the sounds. Is that harmful? Is that bad?
Shayne Piasta:for kids? No, I don't think so. I mean, I think that's one of the reasons why pairing the names with sounds seems to be most effective, again, specifically here in the US, where we do refer to letters by both names and sounds, because there's something called the acrophonic principle. What that term means is that the way some letters are named actually give clues to their sounds. So if you think about the letter B, it actually starts the name starts with the same sound that we associate that letter with, and then there are, of course, some letters that end the letter name ends with the sound like F, where you hear the at the end of the letter name. So what we think might be happening is that kids are leveraging their knowledge of names whether that's knowledge they're bringing to the task or knowledge that they're learning during the task to also help learn to associate some of those sounds, at least for the letters where there is that cue. That happens in the letter name as well.
Melissa:What about the ones where it doesn't? Because I'm sorry, this just came up with my son where there was a I don't remember the exact word, we'll just say jelly, because it starts with the right sound and he said well, that must start with G. I was like, oh, I see where you're going with this, but not quite.
Shayne Piasta:Yeah, and I think that's a complexity of kind of our written system of language. So in English we don't have that really nice one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds that you do have in some other languages, such as Spanish, and so in those cases you know that G for just right. In those cases we need to be able to say like, oh, I hear that sound in the name of the letter, but let's talk about what sound this letter represents when it's in words and things like that.
Lori:Got it so to kind of go along with that. Something that I think I also hear and see a lot is wondering about teachers introducing letters and like how quickly they should introduce them or how much time to spend on each letter. One thing that I have a question about is like would it be different in preschool versus kindergarten? And like I'm thinking about that idea of letter of the week. Right, I know that's how back in back in the early 80s, that's how I was taught you know it was. We were, you know, introduced to one letter a week and your craft and your instruction and your books and your activities all revolved around that letter for the entire week.
Lori:I think I have like some fond memories of like some styrofoam backing with like the letter you know S and then spaghetti on you know kind of glued on it. So just kind of like that idea. But then I also feel like I've heard a lot of people saying that they've introduced them much more quickly and had success there. So what are your thoughts on that and what does the research say?
Shayne Piasta:So I don't know of any research that has directly studied or tested a letter of the week approach against other approaches. That being said, however, there is research both suggesting that children, both preschoolers and kindergartners can learn letters at a much faster pace than one letter a week, and there's also research showing that introducing letters at a slower pace was not as beneficial as introducing letters at a faster pace, but the slower pace wasn't at the rate of one letter a week. It was even faster than that. So I think that, coupled with other kind of more theoretical and practical issues around letter of the week, it then takes the entire school year until you get through all the letters. You know you're not necessarily having time to do a ton of review of other letters and really help kids consolidate.
Shayne Piasta:So there is so much that we are doing in early childhood classrooms that you know letter of the week is often done as this, you know, whole class circle time activity. It takes a long time, not sure we need to be spending that much time on that, which puts up time for focusing on other important things like language and math and science and social studies. So that's what I know in terms of the letter of the week approach and the evidence that's suggesting that we really move more towards a quicker pacing. The other part of your question, though, really gets at the intensity with which we'd be teaching different letters, and we do know that certain letters seem more challenging or difficult for kids to learn than others. So the implication there is that we would adjust our intensity and really think about this kind of within a differentiated instruction type of framework, where we're thinking about what the children are already bringing to the learning experience in terms of knowledge they have, and then also knowing which letters tend to be easier or acquired earlier in development, as opposed to those letters like W that tend to be acquired later in development, it might be more challenging to teach, requiring more instruction.
Melissa:This is great because it goes right into our next question, which is about the order that we should teach letters. Because I mean, I've mentioned it already, but I'm a five year old in preschool now who does have letter of the week and I, you know, I bite my tongue a little bit. It's what's happening, but I'm always fascinated and like sometimes I'm a little skeptical about which letters he tells me are coming home. Especially at the beginning I was like, well, that was an interesting one to start with. And it's my understanding that there isn't research that says there's like one right way to do this, that like you must go in this order, that's what research says, but that there is research that might say like some sequences of letters might be more beneficial than others. Is that right? Do I have that right? Yeah, yeah.
Shayne Piasta:So, yes, I know of no research that has directly tested one sequence of teaching letters versus a different sequence of teaching letters when we think about letters and whether they're more or less challenging to learn, though there are some suggested sequences that I put out there, so we don't actually know if these are quote unquote better, but they align with what we know about alphabet knowledge development, so I could talk through a couple of those if that would be, please.
Melissa:That would be great, and then I will share them with my child's preschool teacher.
Shayne Piasta:In trouble Don't get in trouble, you know so.
Shayne Piasta:So we know, for example, that the letters that appear in children's first names in the US, especially particularly for English monolingual speakers this might actually not hold true for bilingual speakers, but we know that they tend to be more familiar with the letters in their name, right, they're seeing these all the time. There might even be doing some emergent writing to sign in at different centers within their classroom and things like that. So there have been some suggestions of starting with letters that are frequently in kids names or that are in the names of the kids in the classroom, and using that almost as a hook, right. So like this is interesting, it's motivating because it's in our names, especially the first letter, and so kind of starting from there and then moving on to other letters. So that's one suggestion that's been put out there. Another is teaching in alphabetical order, right, so we sing the song. Kids tend to be more most familiar with the names for a, b and c because we talk about the ABCs all the time and they get real mixed up on LMNOP.
Shayne Piasta:Yes, well, yes, that middle part right, but this is what I actually would not suggest. So, yes, we know that children tend to be more familiar with letters, the beginning alphabet and the end of the alphabet. It doesn't really work for the letters in the middle of the alphabet, and also, we want children to be able to identify letters and sounds outside the context of the actual alphabet, and so I think that the danger there is that kids may be relying on their knowledge of the sequence of the alphabet as opposed to truly understanding the names and sounds associated with certain letters, and I have some anecdotal evidence about this. So we often go in and the work we do. We go in and we will screen kids and we ask teachers are there any kids that could particularly use some extra support in alphabet learning? And they'll usually tell us some and they're like no, no, no, but these kiddos they know it. And generally we have to screen everyone whose parents gave permission for us to screen them, and what we sometimes find is because we never assess in the order of the alphabet. So we'll find these kiddos and they seem like, yeah, they know it. Right, they can go from A to Z. But when we do the assessments, we kind of mix up the order of the letters. They're not as successful, and so I think it's really important for kids to be able to associate letters with their names and sounds.
Shayne Piasta:Outside of the context of the ABC song, there are a few other options that have been put out there. So some make use of what we know about the frequency of letters in text, and in this case you would teach more frequent letters earlier and then move to less frequently used letters, and that makes sense in terms of children having more exposure to certain letters and more repetitions and just kind of understanding what they're doing and all the ways that letters work, because they're gonna see those letters often within print. There are also orders that go along with the kind of the sequence in which children develop the ability to make or produce the sounds. So there are certain sounds like R. Right, if we think about young kids, if we think of a sound that's really something that's more challenging for them to produce than kind of most kids are pronouncing it correctly later on in their schooling, then, as opposed to when they're three, you might want to wait and teach the R sound and start with sounds that we know from speech and hearing and communication.
Shayne Piasta:Science tend to just develop the ability to produce earlier on, and then there are other types of sequences. So some curricula, for example, have selected letters to teach at earlier in the year that allow them to move into doing more sound blending or even initial stages of reading. So thinking about the stop consonants like T, and then some of the continuous sounds like M, and then putting in some lax or short vowel sounds so that kids can actually start using their knowledge of letters in a way that leads them into the actual conventional reading process. So lots of different options and what I think is most important is that, until we do have evidence suggesting that one of these or multiple of these are particularly effective, that teachers are intentional about why they're teaching the sequence that they are teaching in their classrooms.
Melissa:Is there research being done on that? Do you know?
Shayne Piasta:I do not know of that offhand I. This is on my short list of projects I would like to do. I think as an academic you often have to find resources and funding to do your research, and I think there's this misnomer out there that every kid masters the alphabet. It's not a big deal and so it's a little. It's been tricky to try to find the resources to be able to do these types of studies.
Melissa:It's interesting because I feel like it's a question all the time when people are choosing curricula, trying to think which one is introducing it the best, and that's when I hear the talk of like, oh, they shouldn't do that letter so early, or they shouldn't do that.
Shayne Piasta:Yeah, I mean, I think focusing on problems of practice that are actually influencing decisions is really important.
Lori:It would be helpful even just to have that information at the ready, right? So, even if it's not like a firm answer, just a blanket of you know, this is there's not a firm answer on this but these are some ways to approach this that makes sense and that are good for kids. We know this rather than just thinking. I feel like we're kind of thinking tunnel vision in terms of, like, what is the best sequence? If there's not one, then we're asking the wrong question, right yeah?
Melissa:but those guidelines that you just went through, or the not guidelines but different suggested orders, I think are really helpful. Yeah, helpful to think about and there are different ways, and that's okay. Maybe I need to be okay with how my child's learning them.
Shayne Piasta:And it may depend on the kiddos in your classroom, right? I mean, ideally we're focusing and using our time efficiently to focus on, you know, meeting kids where they are and building from there, right? So if in my classroom we already know A, b and C for some reason, you know, maybe there are a couple of kiddos who don't, and I'm gonna do some small group work with them. But we don't need to be doing A, b and C when the vast majority for the whole class, when the vast majority of kids are already bringing that knowledge to the learning task.
Melissa:You know, what I've also been curious about is upper case and lower case letters, and so, as you introduce whichever one you start with, does it matter if you do one or the other or both? Is there research for that?
Shayne Piasta:Again, a great question. This is something that teachers ask me all the time. We don't have any research in terms of determining whether directly testing this. Let me say it that way. So we don't have any research directly testing this. What we do have is some correlational research showing that kids are more likely to know the lowercase letter names and sounds if they already knew the uppercase letter and sound, and so this might suggest that a few different things. It could suggest that teaching uppercase first is helpful for learning lowercase. It could also suggest that pairing those up, just like letter names and letter sounds, might be particularly effective, but we don't know that yet and I can see arguments kind of both ways.
Shayne Piasta:On one hand, uppercase letters tend to be a little bit more distinct, right. They're a little bit more visually striking. They're also easier for kids to write if you're pairing your alphabet instruction with also writing. On the other hand, the lowercase letters are the ones that kids are gonna most frequently experience in environmental print and in text, right. So I think again, what's important is really being intentional about. Okay, I've thought this through and this is what I'm going to do, to the best of my knowledge, based on research, but also what I know about the kids in my classroom and as a professional who has a lot of experience in this area.
Lori:I'm wondering, though, if we can move from kind of the what to the how, and as I was reading your chapter the science of alphabet instruction I was thinking about the teaching that is involved in this what is explicit teaching and what is the distributed practice and thinking about some best practices for teaching. As they're grabbing at all of this great information that you're saying, I'm also thinking about highlighting that paired associate learning. Would you be able to kind of share some of these and define them for us and what makes them effective and why?
Shayne Piasta:Sure. So paired associate learning is really important. There's continuing evidence that this is how children learn letters. So what that means is that you are showing the child the letter and, at the same time, providing the name and the sound, given that we have evidence that pairing names and sounds is an effective practice. So this idea of always having those three elements together I'm not saying drill kids with flashcards, right Like, that's not what we want to do. We still want to do this in appropriate and engaging and motivating and fun ways. But we do always want to make sure that we are explicitly teaching the name and sound when showing the visual form. So that's how paired associate learning also leads into this idea of explicit instruction.
Shayne Piasta:So, moving from being able or having the adults or the teacher provide that opportunity for paired associate learning, providing opportunities to do that together and then providing some opportunities for independent practice for kids, so that would be an effective way of going about teaching the letters. You will also reference to Syruji practice. So this is the idea that we need to constantly cycle through learning because before it really becomes part of our knowledge base, that it's not a one and done. We're not gonna teach this letter on this day and then never talk about it again. It's really this idea of intentionally providing additional practice and learning opportunities to review things that have already been taught. So, in this case, continuing to review letters that have already been taught, even as we're introducing more letters to kids.
Lori:Yeah, that's helpful and kind of along those same lines, something that I hear in terms of ways that you might approach instruction for younger children, the idea of multi-sensory teaching or multi-sensory instruction. So while you're doing all of those things, you're showing them the letter, you're saying it, they're practicing it, that you might be tracing it in sand or making it with Play-Doh. Is there any research that supports that multi-sensory input?
Shayne Piasta:In general. I'm stuck with umUUF thinking about multisensory approaches. So not specific necessarily to alphabet instruction, but just in general with respect to literacy learning. There does not seem to be evidence suggesting that a multisensory approach is any better or worse than a non-multisensory approach when we drill down to alphabet instruction.
Shayne Piasta:I actually a former student, now colleague, dr Selman Park, did her dissertation on this, where she very carefully tested it and made sure that everything else was the same, except for having these multisensory opportunities in one of her experimental conditions versus not using a multisensory approach, versus also a true control condition, and she also did not find a statistically significant advantage of using the multisensory approach.
Shayne Piasta:In some cases, descriptively, the impact was a little bit higher, but it was technically no different than not using a multisensory approach. So I think the takeaway there is that multisensory might not be necessarily more effective when we're thinking about outcomes such as learning letters. But that doesn't mean you can't use a multisensory approach because it was just about equally effective as a non-multisensory approach. And I think where some of the research on this maybe should go next is really thinking about some of the other outcomes beyond the actual learning. So maybe this is something that is more engaging for kids and so in the longterm maybe there are benefits to using a multisensory approach for engagement motivation and then that could lead into more long-term effects of using that approach on literacy. It also could be that there are no advantages of a multisensory approach and it's really again up to teachers which what is going to work best for you and your students in your classroom.
Melissa:Can I just get a quick clarifying question on that, because I've seen a lot of questions about this on Facebook groups where they ask this question about the multisensory and a lot of people respond and say well, actually what's meant by multisensory is being able to see the letters visually, hear the letter names, hear the sounds and then have practice at writing the letters like those are your multisenses that are being used. And a lot of people do equate it with what Laurie mentioned of sand or shaving cream or these other things that seem like maybe a little more work. Where do you follow on that definition of the word I?
Shayne Piasta:think if we're talking about seeing letters and then hearing names and hearing sounds, those are two sensory modalities, but those modalities are used in all of literacy learning. So to me, multisensory really does have to add another element, whether it's tactile or haptic or it's gross motor movements. I really think that if we're talking about literacy practices being multisensory, there is a need to have something in addition to visual in auditory modalities integrated into the instruction.
Lori:And that's actually a really helpful clarification. Thank you, cause that's how I was thinking about it, but then I thought, well, maybe I'm being too extra in my interpretation, just I don't know. So that was helpful. So, kind of going back to that idea of letter formation, I gave you that example with, like, when we're using the multisensory. So let's think about letter formation now, just in general, like when should this happen and what are best practices? Cause I think sometimes it's really tricky for little people to do those letter formations and sometimes we try to give them, like, bigger pencils or have them use their arms and their pointer fingers or their hands and make it in the air and what. So when should this happen? Should we teach it younger? Should we wait? Should we use a multisensory approach? Or and I know you already answered that, but I'm just throwing ideas out there I'd love to hear what you have to say about this.
Shayne Piasta:Yeah, so there are many scholars who focus on emergent writing and so they might have an answer different from my own. My answer is that I've not seen any research that's really been addressing this question. I mean, I think if children don't have the fine motor skills to be able to hold a typical pencil in order to create the strokes involved in letter writing, then that would not be developmentally appropriate for that kiddo, right? So we need to think about other ways of doing it, like air writing and the tracing with a finger, things like that. But again, I don't know of any evidence showing that starting earlier, starting later, matching to kind of fine motor skills. I don't know of any evidence speaking to that directly. So that sounds like another area that's kind of ripe for exploration.
Melissa:I was just gonna say. I was thinking that it probably does make sense for students to be able to identify letters earlier than they can actually form the letters.
Shayne Piasta:Is that correct? Again, it's an area where we don't have a ton of evidence. So that's a great question Do you need to know more about the letters and the letter names before truly benefiting from engaging in letter writing? There is some research that has shown that adding a writing component to alphabet instruction does not necessarily lead to any benefits for the alphabet learning piece itself. That being said, when I talk with early childhood teachers, the writing component not just letter writing, but also the idea of composing and all these other elements of writing is tends to be something that they want to engage children in. We know that emergent writing is a key emergent literacy skill, and so when I talk with teachers, they're always very interested in having a writing component alongside the alphabet instruction.
Lori:Yeah, and what you described earlier kind of makes me think about the idea of a least restrictive environment, right?
Lori:So if a child is ready to hold a pencil or a larger pencil and they're able to, then that makes sense for that child.
Lori:But then you know, and referring much earlier in our conversation to your idea of differentiation, if a child is not, then it might make sense for that child to use their finger and trace, or to use their hand and to draw the letter in the air until they have the hang of it. So that kind of, I think, feels to me as a teacher really reassuring that I can do what's right for the child in front of me while still maintaining, you know, integrity to teaching the letter and all of the other stuff that we talked about earlier. Right, so there's not maybe there's not a quote answer to this, but we do have some firmer answers or ideas on how to like, what to teach and some ideas around that. So that feels like, okay, this is an area where I might be able to be a little creative and to use my, you know, teacher powers to help my students in front of me. Does that sound like it would be an accurate way to kind of dive into this.
Shayne Piasta:Yeah, exactly, and I think differentiated instruction does have, again, not specific to alphabet knowledge, but more generally with respect to literacy and also other domains. There's a large body of research suggesting that that is effective and it aligns with many of our practices and theories that we use in education, like scaffolding right If we think about by Gotsky and you know really helping the child do just beyond what they're currently able to do. I think that all fits together and makes perfect sense as a way to facilitate alphabet learning as well.
Lori:Okay. So, speaking of students coming into school and let's just say kindergarten for the sake of this question, let's say students already know all of their letters and maybe they even know some of like common sounds associated with those letters, but other students may not. Does it matter when students quote master these, and I say master, just yeah, because we know that there's not like a set day in time when you learn this one thing. So I'm just curious if it matters.
Shayne Piasta:I am super interested in that question. So my team's been doing a lot of recent work around this and there's some prior work showing that maybe we need to attend to not just level but also trajectory of alphabet knowledge learning, because the trajectory can actually matter for later reading skills, and so some recent work that we've done in my lab we have replicated that finding with different early literacy outcomes. So you can think about this. As you know, kids are gonna come into preschool and kindergarten with all different levels of knowledge about the alphabet right, because they're coming from so many different backgrounds, they've had so many different experiences, and so some children may not have a lot of alphabet knowledge entering the classroom, but we don't know why that is. So there could be children who don't have a lot of alphabet knowledge simply because they just haven't had the experiences and the opportunities to really learn that, versus children who are entering the classroom don't have high levels of alphabet knowledge and that's a result of them actually having a phonological issue or having difficulty in learning about orthography and phonology. And so the kids who maybe just haven't had opportunities to learn this, you might get them in the classroom and they may just take off right. So we talk about that as kind of a growing profile where maybe they started lower and maybe that was similar to other kids. But these kids are just kind of on a positive trajectory once they are having those experiences, whereas the other children who again might have started in the same place but they're not showing much growth.
Shayne Piasta:Well, there's a difference in later literacy skills for the kids in those different profiles and there's also a difference that we've been able to detect for kids who come in with high levels of alphabet knowledge. Right it's, there's only 26 letters. There's not much more room for them to grow. So they might come in with high levels and not show much growth. But there's still an advantage for those kids on some of these later literacy outcomes compared to that growing profile, even if they end up in the same place. So it's not a solid research base at this point in time, but there are a handful of studies actually suggesting that when children are learning the alphabet and kind of what those learning trajectories look like might be important for continued literacy learning.
Melissa:Yeah, I think that's really important and I'm wondering. I sometimes hear people say things like it's not, it's not developmentally appropriate. You know, don't let's not push all this on them in kindergarten, let them play in kindergarten, and that they're not ready for it yet. So it's it's really interesting to hear you say that it does matter in the long run for literacy, not just even on alphabet learning and kindergarten, but for the long run.
Shayne Piasta:Yeah, it may matter and, like I said, we need more research in that, in that area. But to me, you know, kids are capable of learning all kinds of really complex concepts and ideas. Right Young kids can learn about physics. They actually even derive some physics principles without having been taught about that. So kids are learners, they want to learn, they're kind of learning all the time. So what's developmentally appropriate is really based on what they're already bringing to a task and then how you go about teaching, as opposed to the actual content of the teaching. So I don't see developmentally appropriate as being kind of diametrically opposed to the idea of doing some direct instruction or being really intentional about the instruction that's provided on certain skills within an early childhood classroom.
Melissa:Yeah, that makes so much sense, we're wrapping up a little bit here, even though I'm sure Lori and I both have a ton more questions for you, but we're gonna open it up to you just a little bit, just to make sure you get to say everything you might want to say. So are there any other best practices for alphabet instruction that we just haven't touched on that you want to make sure everyone hears.
Shayne Piasta:One practice that does have a decent amount of evidence supporting it is the idea of using embedded mnemonics, and so Linnea Aire and her team have done work on this, as have others, and what an embedded mnemonic is is when the letter is in the shape of an object that actually corresponds to the sound. So the easiest one for me to kind of describe in a podcast is a letter S, but picture the letter S as a sneak right. So we're giving kids cues to both well, not only the letter form, but then also that helps them remember the name of the letter and also gives them a cue to most common sound of that letter, and there does seem to be fairly good evidence supporting that. So that might be a practice for teachers to think about integrating into their instruction, whether that's their own curricula that they're developing and following, or whether they are using some sort of commercially available curricula, but could tweak it in order to introduce that piece of alphabet learning.
Melissa:That's great, and just the embedded part of it means like the S is actually the snake right. It's not like an S next to a snake, it's actually one and the same.
Shayne Piasta:Exactly exactly, and there's less research about other types of mnemonics and whether or not those can benefit alphabet learning, but there is definitely solid research suggesting that the embedded mnemonic seems to be helpful.
Lori:I feel like Carolyn Strom talked about this with us when we talked with her on our podcast.
Melissa:She did Right, Melissa Yep.
Lori:Yep, she brought it up. We'll have to link that episode because I think the more we can learn about this, the better. It's. Really. It was a good. It's a good reminder of that. I use the mnemonics all the time, not like in this way, but in a different way, as I remember what I need to grab when I go into a room, you know I'm like, okay, all right, what, what sentence can I make so that I remember? So I don't walk into the bedroom and completely forget why I came in here. Is there anything else, shane, that you'd like to leave our listeners with?
Shayne Piasta:I think a take home message is that alphabet learning is important. You know, many children do have opportunities to learn about the alphabet and are bringing knowledge about that into the classroom, and other children just haven't had as many opportunities to learn about this. So, thinking about ways that you can meet the needs of the different learners in your classroom, building on what they're bringing with them through things like differentiated instruction, it's just really important as we move to ensure that every child is on a path towards conventional literacy success.
Melissa:You had already mentioned, we mentioned the handbook on the science of early literacy and your chapter is chapter seven in the book. So, like we said, we'll link that so that people can find that book if they want to learn more. But I'm wondering if you have any other resources, books, articles, anything that you would suggest if people want to learn more about this topic.
Shayne Piasta:So we have lots of research articles, but I've also written and others have written a few more friendly articles. I will say that really summarizes the research that have shown up yeah, that have shown up in places like the reading teacher and other outlets, so that's something. Certainly I could share those links with you. I do also have a webpage where some of the materials we have developed, including progress monitoring tools for letter sound knowledge, and then colleagues had developed similar tools for letter name knowledge, and so all of that is linked there, as well as some alphabet lessons that we created and we use in our research that are freely available if teachers are looking for something, and we have shown that these particular lessons do result in alphabet learning. So I'm always happy to share as many resources as we possibly can.
Melissa:Well, we thank you so much for sharing all your knowledge with us today. It was so helpful to hear, because we hear these kinds of questions all the time and people sometimes just have their foot stamped in the ground on what it should be, and so it's really helpful to hear what has research behind it and what doesn't. I know that sometimes that can feel frustrating for the science of reading, movement of oh, there's no research about that, but it's helpful to hear that this particular thing doesn't have it. So if you're hearing people say this is the one way to do it not necessarily right this is still out for debate and we can still talk about what is the best way. Not everything is research-based yet Right.
Shayne Piasta:And if not research-based, then we can at least be doing things that are research, aligned and great thing about science we're learning more and more every day. It is always building, and so hopefully, as time goes by, we will have more answers to these types of questions that we get from teachers.
Melissa:That's right, or maybe some people out there will research this question for us. Well, thank you again, shane. We can't thank you enough for being here with us today. Thanks, that was so much fun To stay connected with us. Sign up for our email list at literacypodcastcom, join our Facebook group and follow us on Instagram and Twitter.
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Lori:We appreciate you so much and we're so glad you're here to learn with us.