Last time, I showed you how to help students own the alphabet as more than just the ABCs. Each symbol or letter is a picture of sound. Our job is to teach kids how to attach the sound or sounds that each symbol represents.

We’ll start at the very beginning with the letter  A a . As you can see, I printed both the capitalized version and the lower case versions. I do that because children need to see and use both forms. I start with A a,  not because it is the first letter of our alphabet, but because it represents the first three vowel sounds I teach. I repeat…it has THREE sounds that should be taught right out of the starting gate: a, a, a. Click the play button below to hear the correct