Alphabet knowledge is a basic building block for early reading and writing. Children who learn the forms, names and sounds of letters during early childhood are less likely to experience reading difficulties later in school.
Crane Center faculty associate Dr. Shayne Piasta studies how children develop alphabet knowledge and best practices for alphabet instruction. Below are some highlights of this work along with resources for assessing and teaching the alphabet.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
In addition to Dr. Piasta, other team members include Somin Park, Lori Fitzgerald, Hillary Libnoch, and Kristin Farley.
Publications, News, and Media
Peer-Reviewed Research
“Young children’s alphabet learning as a function of instruction and letter difficulty”published in Learning and Individual Differences
“Profiles and predictors of growth in children’s alphabet knowledge” published in the Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk
“Assessment of young children’s letter-sound knowledge: Initial validity evidence for Letter Sound Short Forms” published in Assessment for Effective Intervention
“Measuring young children’s alphabet knowledge: Development and validation of brief letter-sound assessments” published in The Elementary School Journal
“Developing early literacy skills: A meta-analysis of alphabet learning and instruction” published in Reading Research Quarterly
“Learning letter names and sounds: Effects of instruction, letter type, and phonological processing skill” published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
“Moving to Assessment-Guided Differentiated Instruction to Support Young Children’s Alphabet Knowledge” published in The Reading Teacher
“IRTs of the ABCs: Children’s letter name acquisition” published in the Journal of School Psychology
“Fostering alphabet knowledge development: a comparison of two instructional approaches”published in Reading and Writing
“How many letters should preschoolers in public programs know? The diagnostic efficiency of various preschool letter-naming benchmarks for predicting first-grade literacy achievement” published in the Journal of Educational Psychology
“Are there developmental patterns in emergent bilingual children’s English letter-name knowledge?”published in the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism
Books
“The science of early alphabet instruction: What we do and do not know” (book chapter), published in Handbook on the Science of Early Literacy
Podcasts
“Teaching Literacy Podcast” episode: Alphabet instruction with Dr. Shayne Piasta (Episode 41)
“Literacy Matters: Conversations with Cheryl” podcast episode: Four key components of teaching alphabetic knowledge (Season 2, Episode 3)
“READ Podcast” episode: The ABCs of early literacy learning and teacher knowledge with Shayne Piasta, Ph.D. (Episode 44)
“Triple R Teaching” podcast episode: What does research say about alphabet instruction? with Dr. Shayne Piasta (Episode 117)
“Voice of Literacy” podcast episode: Alphabet learning and early literacy with Dr. Shayne Piasta(Episode from 3/20/2017)
Alphabet Learning Assessments
An important first step is to assess what children know about letter names and sounds. Here are two brief assessments of children’s letter-name knowledge and letter-sound knowledge. Additional ideas for assessment are included this article from The Reading Teacher
LETTER NAME KNOWLEDGE
Our colleagues Dr. Laura Tortorelli, Dr. Ryan Bowles, and Dr. Lori Skibbe at Michigan State University developed the Quick Letter Name Knowledge Assessment (Q-LNK). You can access the assessment and more information here.
LETTER SOUND KNOWLEDGE
Developed by Dr. Piasta and her colleagues, the Letter-Sound Short Form Assessments a brief and easy tool for assessing young children’s basic letter-sound knowledge. These assessments were developed using item response theory and demonstrate strong psychometric properties. They are designed to provide formative and summative information concerning children’s letter-sound knowledge for educators and researchers.
Materials available for download include two versions of the assessment, each with multiple parallel forms. The three-form version includes three parallel forms of 8-letters each and is designed for those wishing to assess letter-sound knowledge at three measurement occasions (e.g., beginning, middle, and end of year). The four-form version includes four parallel forms of 6-letters each and is designed for those wishing to assess letter-sound knowledge more frequently, such as the four annual measurement occasions often utilized with other progress monitoring tools. Scoring keys are provided to convert raw scores to scores based on the item response theory analysis. This includes scaled scores (based on a mean of 20 and standard deviation of 2) and sum scores (the number of letter sounds the child would be expected know, had s/he been assessed on all 26 letters). Users should review the associated manuscript (Piasta et al., 2016). Additional validity information is provided in Piasta et al. (2018). Links to these studies are provided below.
This assessment has been peer-reviewed. You can read The University of Chicago’s Press Journal, The Elementary School Journal, article here or the Sage Journal article here.
Best Practices in Alphabet Instruction
Surprisingly, we know very little about how to best support young children’s alphabet learning. Should we teach uppercase letters first or teach both uppercase and lowercase letters? Should we teach letter names before teaching sounds? Should we start with easier or more difficult letters? Does multisensory teaching result in better learning? How can we teach letters in fun, engaging ways?
Dr. Piasta and her research team are trying to answer these questions in their Best Practices in Alphabet Instruction project. The initial portion of this work involved creating lessons that can be used with young learners to provide differentiated, targeted alphabet instruction. In creating these lessons, the research team partnered with experienced teachers at the A. Sophie Rogers School for Early Learning in the Schoenbaum Family Center at The Ohio State University.
To evaluate the lessons, the research team partnered with local early childhood centers to conduct a pilot study. Results showed that the lessons improved children’s letter-name knowledge, letter-sound knowledge, and letter writing. Read the results of the ABC pilot study here.
After the pilot study, lessons were slightly revised to include more opportunities for children to pair letters with their names and sounds. These lessons are free and available for download.