2. When to Teach Letter Names and Sounds

The idea that letters represent the sounds in words is known as the alphabetic principle. This is where phonemic awareness and phonics come together.

We teach sound-letter correspondence at the beginning of the phonics continuum.

We often begin teaching sound-letter correspondence in pre-K. Children should generally be able to name all 26 letters, recognize them in both their uppercase and lowercase formats, form the letters correctly, and identify and produce the letter sounds by the end of kindergarten.

In first grade, students typically learn graphemes that spell a single sound but appear in words as letter combinations, such as the digraph ‘ch’ that spells /ch/ in chip, and advanced vowel teams such as ‘ai’ that spells /ā/ in train. They also learn consonant blends such as ‘st’, ‘sm’, or ‘cl’.

We continue to teach sound-letter correspondence through second grade and beyond, as students learn more prefixes, suffixes, and advanced grapheme patterns.

To be successful with sound-letter correspondence, students should generally be able to hear and distinguish the individual sounds within words. This is called phonemic awareness and is a pre-reading skill.

Learn more about teaching irregularly spelled high-frequency words.