FREE ABC Book: What do you do if they can’t recognize the letters?

So..here we are half way through the year. Do you still have kids who don’t know the alphabet? Then, read on….
At one time, we had Reading Recovery, a great program for first graders in our school. (We no longer have the program—$$$$$.) The Reading Recovery teacher often shared ideas with us that she thought might help our kids not need her in first grade. So, this is one of the Reading Recovery ideas, tweaked and changed, but originally a Reading Recovery strategy.
This book is a FREE file, so keep reading to the bottom of the post where you can snag it up!

At this time of year, I would do this with any kinders who do not know the alphabet!

To get ready:

• 1. First, reproduce the pages to make the abc book.
• 2. Cut and staple the pages together.
• 3. Now, reproduce a page of clip art for each child making the book.
• 4. Invite the children to cut the pictures apart and put them inside a baggie with their name written on the outside.

Here is what it will look like. Each child will need their own book and their own set of pictures!

To use the book:

• 1. Assess alphabet naming knowledge.
• 2. For any letter, capital or lower case, that the child knows, find the picture in the bag that starts with that letter.
• 3. Invite the children to glue the picture on the page with the beginning letter.
• 4. Repeat this with all of the letters, capital or lower case, that the child knows.
• 5. Now add in three more pictures to go with letters that they do not know. Put a post it note flag on these three pages. ****Leave all other pages blank!

Now:

• 6. Each and EVERY day, the child should “read” you the book.
• 7. To read the book, they turn the pages one by one. If they do NOT have a picture on that page, they skip it.
• 8. If they do have a picture on the page, they read it like this: “G g goat”.
• 9. When they get to a page with a post it note flag--if they can read the letter to you correctly, remove the flag.
• 10. If they do not know the letter, you read it to them and leave the flag on the page.
• 11. After finishing reading the book, any post it notes in your hand now can now be used to add more pictures.

What about letter sounds?
I use this abc book for teaching letter recognition, not letter sounds. I teach letter sounds mostly through writing and songs. I love Shari Sloane! She has great songs for both abc recognition and letter sounds! I made a lot of her songs into music books that we use as we sing along.You can get her music on her website www.kidscount1234.com or on itunes.

So I wanted to print the music books small enough for their little hands…and to save ink, cardstock and laminating!  I love the way they turned out.

• I printed them 1/2 page.
• Then, after binding the books, I put a sticky cd holder on the back of the books.
• Finally, I burned the song on a CD.
• I put the CD inside the sticky CD holder.

To print the books1/2 page size, follow these steps:

• Open the print menu.
• Click on “multiple” and on “2” for pages per sheet.
• Be sure you click on “landscape” under orientation so that the pages fit nicely on the paper.

Here are the abc books that I remade--with new clip art! If you already have them, you can get the updates in your “my purchases” section on tpt. Also, for “The Letters on the Bus”, I added the rest of the alphabet so that you can use the book with the open version of the song that Shari also included on the CD.





I do use a sound sorting activity each week to differentiate where they are in sound production. You can read more about it here in another blog post.