Preschool learning : English

In the first lesson –which would be several short lessons in a preschool or kindergarten setting — students play a game to associate sounds with something other than speech, i.e., with shapes (in color). Learning to associate sounds with shapes is the key awareness in literacy. These shapes don’t have to be letters. In fact, students get the key awareness much easier if the games don’t begin with letters. It is also much more equitable since some students have played with letters at home and some haven’t. In this lesson (2) the students are introduced to a new set of shapes — alphabetic letters — and (get this!) they already know the sounds for these remarkable cultural shapes because the letters are presented in the same colors as the colored rectangles from the earlier lessons. The letter chart (Fidel) at the beginning of the lesson shows that many letters are used for the same sound in English spelling. But complicated English spelling isn’t an issue in the beginning. This simple rule covers it all for now: Any letter or set of letters in the same color will have the same sound.