Kindergarten reading: letter-recognition strategies

For many Kindergarten students who are having difficulty learning how a letter looks, it is important to try many different types of reading strategies, including one that young children are great at—jumping around!

For a Kindergarten student in Chelmsford, MA, I created a variation on the game Twister: I wrote letters on the spots, and when I called out “Put your foot on the letter that makes the sound [sound of the letter T],” the child would place his foot on the letter T. At first, this student knew which letter went with which sound, but was unable to identify any of the visual forms of the letters.

After practice, however, he was able to identify how each of the letters on the mat looked. Over several weeks, I changed the letters on the mat so that he could continue to use this game in order to become more comfortable with how letters looked.