Books About the ABC’s: Why Are These Important to Student Success?

Books About the ABC’s: Why Are These Important to Student Success?

Alphabetical knowledge, or knowing letter names and later, letter sounds which merge into formal phonics instruction (Savage, 2011), is one of the best predictors of student success when they are learning to read. The ability to look at an individual letter and recognize its sound is a skill that children are taught and must work to develop over time (Savage, 2011, pg. 28), they are not born with the ability, so it is our responsibility as educators to teach them these things within our classroom. This can be done through letter charts, alphabetical notecards, or, what I will be discussing in this blog post, ABC books. In this blog post I will highlight the process of how students begin to learn letters, recognize them, and associate the symbols with the sounds they make, while giving you a few examples of great ABC books that can assist in the teaching process.



Pulling On Knowledge from the World Around Them:

When young children are just learning how to read and write they are introduced to the sounds that letters are associated with first, and then, later, move on to recognizing the sound and symbol association. Teachers utilize what their students already know about the world around them and incorporate it into their classroom to make the process of learning language easier.  This is why in Early Childhood classrooms you can see the walls covered in decor that highlight(s) the alphabet, illustrations categorized by the letter the item(s) begin with (ex. ‘E’ for elephant), and so much more. 

Children begin learning about individual letters before they can even conceptualize what they are and mean. From the day children are born they are taking in knowledge about the world around them. The information that they are being exposed to is stored inside their brains and when they enter a classroom environment teachers should pull on this prior knowledge to help them learn about letters and help build their alphabetical knowledge. A great book to assist with this is A is For Apple by Cydney Weingrate. A is For Appleis an ABC book for young children, roughly birth to 5 years old, that walks children through the alphabet, while highlighting everyday objects that students are exposed to. Showcasing these everyday items makes learning the alphabet a little easier for students because, “children use both their knowledge of literacy and life to help them decode and make sense of [the] text.” (Suto-manning & Ladson-billings, 2016). For example in the book A is For Apple the author includes that the letter ‘C’ is for cup. This is extremely helpful during the learning process because as children begin to develop a better understanding of letters, and become more alphabetically aware, they start to focus on print cues in the text. Meaning that even if a child

did not know the word ‘cup’ they would still be able to pull hints away from the page and figure out what the unknown word is (Owocki & Goodman, 2002). Additionally, when we, as educators, begin the process of developing our students' alphabetical knowledge we teach children the names of letters before covering it’s form(s). Students will be able to look at the pages, recognize the objects, and get introduced to the ways letters look through items that they are already familiar with, connecting the knowledge to their lives outside the classroom, before explicitly learning the sound each one is associated with. As the learning process continues children will be able to make connections, not only to the items they see, but the symbols (letters) they view as well.  Furthermore, once children can recognize letters, they can begin to discover the sounds each individual letter makes. A is for Apple is also helpful in this regard, because every word that is highlighted gives them an opportunity to hear the distinct sound the letter makes, forming a connection between the symbol and the way it is spoken in their brain(s).

Recognizing Individual Letters:

When children are exposed to literature they start to understand written symbols and begin to recognize their shapes (Owocki & Goodman, 2002), this is a good thing because, as stated above, before a child can start to associate a letter with the sound it makes, building their phonemic awareness, they need to be able to recognize the individual symbol(s) in words. Alphabet books are especially helpful with this because they expose children to the letters and help strengthen that connection for how they look in their brain.

The book W is for Wind  by Pat Michaels is a great example. This book highlights each individual letter, showing students how it looks while elaborating on the topics at hand, rather than just showing an object, or thing, that begins with the specific letter. Students will learn about clouds, evaporation, and wind as this book is read to them, so it could be used in coursework that does not necessarily pertain to classes over reading or writing, like a science class. W is For Wind does a great job at highlighting letters in upper and lowercase. This is important because, “alphabetical knowledge involves more than the ability to rattle off the letters from A to Z...” “... knowing the alphabet involves the ability to recognize the names of individual letters in and out of sequence, and to match the uppercase to

lowercase form..”(Savage, 2011, pg. 48).  Over time, children will be able to see letters, recognize them, and they will start to hypothesize what these symbols can mean, how they are meant, and how they are organized (Owocki & Goodman, 2002). Young children are exposed to literature everywhere, and once children begin the process of learning letters and begin to notice them more, they will strengthen the connection in their brains between the symbol and what it looks like in text. Just like A is For Apple, the book W is for Wind also does a great job at showcasing the letters along with the sounds they make. If a classroom of students were to read both of these books they would be exposed to objects they recognize, anchoring the knowledge to something they already know, the way letters look, and the sounds letters make, which are all necessary to the learning process.

Associating Individual Letters With the Sounds They Make: 

The last step in learning about letters is understanding the sounds they make. All the books I have coveredso far do a great job at highlighting letters and words in meaningful contexts, while introducing them to their sounds. 

However, the book Queen Quail is Quiet and other ABC Tongue Twisters by Erika Barriga does a fantastic job of this. In this book children are exposed to each letter multiple times on every page through alliteration. The author does not just include one word that begins with the letter, but multiple. This exposure to specific letters helps children start to recognize how each symbol is associated with a specific sound in multiple contexts. Even though, “learning letter sounds is a natural extension of alphabet training” (Savage, 2011), children will still need help building and developing better  phonemic awareness.  

A child may know how

to say the word ‘cat’ and know the sound the ‘c’ makes, but they could see the word ‘car’ and not know that the ‘c’ makes the same sound if they only know the pronunciation of ‘c’ from that specific context. In order to form the auditory and visual connection between symbols, their exposure to letters, and the ways they can look, cannot be limited. The book Queen Quail is Quiet and other ABC Tongue Twisters not only highlights the letter multiple times, but, like the other books discussed in this post, gives children a visual aid on the page, again giving alphabetical children (Owocki & Goodman, 2002) hints as to what the unknown word might be. Teaching students about the alphabet, showcasing individual letters and objects associated with them, and showcasing the sound they make are all necessary to teaching children how to read. All three of the books I have showcased above do an amazing job of keeping students engaged in the stories, while walking them through these learning steps.