No More Teaching a Letter a Week (original) (raw)

2015

Afterword by Nell K. Duke: One of the most difficult challenges you face as a teacher is to teach against the grain: to teach in a way that departs from how you were taught, how your mentor taught, how your friends and colleagues teach. And perhaps few instructional practices are as engrained as teaching a letter a week. But you know now that in this case, teaching against the grain is the right thing to do. Teaching a letter of the week for twenty-six weeks is neither the most effective, nor the most efficient, nor the most compelling way to teach the alphabet to young children. You can do better—much better—and we hope that you can persuade your friends, colleagues, even your mentors to do better too. I completely understand the insecurities that can come with moving away from a letter-a-week approach. I so appreciate the power of Bill Teale’s review of research to convince us that this is the right thing to do. I so appreciate the confidence-building tools and techniques that Becky McKay shares. I love that Becky provides a tool to help us track which letters and sounds children have learned and which merit further attention. I love that Becky offers many ideas for structuring the curriculum such that it is more meaningful to students than a week on X and actually provides more opportunities for effective alphabet instruction. As you well know, some children don’t rely on us to develop their alphabet knowledge. Some come to us with deep knowledge of letters and sounds, perhaps even decoding words already. But as you also well know, some children depend almost entirely on us to learn the alphabet. Those children need and deserve for us to teach them letters and sounds, to develop their phonological awareness and print concepts, in the most powerful way we can find. If we’re not confident that we’ve provided this essential foundation in letter–sound knowledge, phonological awareness, and print concepts, we risk setting a negative momentum for children’s literacy: they may enter first grade lacking skills to make sense of new words; they may become reluctant readers who choose to avoid the difficulty of reading new texts; without strong reading lives, they may not gather the background knowledge and habits that will allow them future academic success. That’s what can happen if we don’t employ alternatives to letter-of-the-week. Mark Twain once said, “Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” As you move away from a letter a week, know that Becky, Bill, Ellin, and I will be gratified. And know that your colleagues may well be astonished—astonished at the depth with which you develop students’ alphabet knowledge. Moving away from letter of the week is the right direction for you to go. From here on out, for you ABCs mean A Better Course.