Letter Name Fluency

My class has been working on their letter name fluency since the beginning of the year.  I like to assess all my children at the beginning of the year, usually within the first two weeks of school, to see what letters they know.  It varies every year.  There have been years where the majority of children already know almost all upper and lower case and then there are years like this one where they know the letters in their names.

 

I wish we would have graphed their knowledge at the beginning of the year so their true growth during the first half of the year would have been represented.  When we graphed the number of letters we knew, I simply gave children a post-it note with their number and they drew their picture and wrote their name.  I already had the template for the graph made on butcher paper. 

We have made a ton of progress.  We graphed the number of upper and lower case letters we knew in October and then again most recently in December right before Winter Break.  We have talked about our growth and areas that continue to give us problems.  I think talking about common errors helps some children understand and quickly learn the letters that are not identified or misidentified.  Overall, my class continues to struggle with the common lower case letters of b, d, p, and q.  We also continue to work on naming the five vowels as well as their long and short sounds.  I made this game for letter name fluency to help us with the recognition of these letters.  You can download it here.  I made dice for the game out of wooden cubes by simply writing the letters needed for the game on the wooden cubes with a sharpie.  We are going to play these games as a class a few times before they are put in our daily 5 rotation at word work.

I made a similar game to help us with our sight word recognition.  If you are interested in using it with your class, you can find it here.  The games are really beneficial in helping them learn concepts that they struggle with because it offers multiple exposures which is exactly what some children need.

What ways have been beneficial for your class to learn their letters, sounds or sight words?