Nathaniel placed each candle and book lower case letter card with its corresponding log cabin capital letter card. To go with our Lincoln theme, I made cards with log cabin, book and candle graphics. We are using the Dolch sight word lists and working on the pre-primer level.Ī second activity we do regularly is lower and capital letter matching. We quickly do the gross motor sign that we use for the letter sound and go over any sight words that start with that letter. Nathaniel picks a letter card, finds the letter on his AAC device Qwerty keyboard to say its name, and then places the letter card in its “house” on our word wall. We complete all five letters in ten minutes or less. The Enhanced Alphabet Knowledge lesson is short, usually less than ten minutes, but this activity is even faster. I chose five different letters per day and have them written on cards. I have seen Nathaniel’s retention of letters and sounds improve significantly by offering these additional layers of review.

I use two additional activities daily to review a larger number of letters and their phonetic sounds. ( Find last week’s literacy sneak peak here.) I continued with the alphabet picture books and song and rhyme books that I mentioned last week. I provide a mini lesson each day our letters for instruction this week were X, W, O, K, and H. We are in our fourth cycle of Enhanced Alphabet Knowledge Instruction. I focus on five areas of instruction: alphabet knowledge and phonological awareness, shared reading, shared writing, independent reading, and independent writing.Īlphabet Knowledge and Phonological Awareness: Erickson and Koppnhaver’s book, Comprehensive Literacy for All, Teaching Students with Significant Disabilities to Read and Write. I am implementing the recommendations of Drs. In honor of President’s Day this week, I based our literacy learning on the book, Abe Lincoln: The boy who loved books by Kay Winters and Nancy Carpenter.

Abe Lincoln by Kay Winters