Resources
 How
To Teach, Review, and Recycle the Alphabet with New
Parade:
Twelve Steps to Success
Theresa
Zanatta
Co-author, New Parade
Click on one of the twelve steps:
1. Create a print-rich classroom.
2.
Present the whole alphabet.
3.
Teach one letter at a time systematically, but don't
stop other language work in the meantime.
4.
Present and then practice each letter using all the
senses.
5.
Decide if you want to teach just the lower-case letters
or the lower-case and the capital letters together and
in what order.
6.
Get parents involved.
7. Have each student make a 'letter framer'
in class.
8.
Read stories aloud as often as you can.
9.
Invite children to make books of all kinds.
10.
Display your children's personal best work.
11.
Don't worry! Be patient, accepting, and tolerant of
individual differences.
12.
Celebrate your children's successes!
1.
Create a print-rich classroom
Research
shows that the more print that you can surround your
students with, the better the students' chances of being
successful with reading and writing. You can begin to
create a print-rich classroom where language is visible
everywhere by having students make their own language
posters, bulletin boards, and murals.
Fill
your classroom with letters. Have your children make
letter posters, where they find and draw pictures of
items that they know begin with the letter.
New
Parade comes with a poster pack of nine posters
for every level. With each unit, you have a New Parade
poster. Use this poster to create a word wall by posting
word cards (cards with the key unit vocabulary) all
around the poster. The first letter of each word can
be highlighted to help children in the earlier levels
focus on the beginning letter rather than the whole
word.
At
the beginning of every unit in the New Parade
Teacher's Edition, you will find suggestions about creating
a bulletin board for the unit. This is a bulletin board
that can be created by your students with material and
language from the unit.
(Click
here for Theresa's article on 'The
Power of Posters.')
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2.
Present the whole alphabet
You
can begin to develop awareness of the whole alphabet
by singing the alphabet song just as native speakers
of English do when they are three and four years of
age and still have not had any formal letter training.
Your students will sing along and learn the letters
without needing to know each letter individually yet.
(The song is in the audio program for Level 1 of New
Parade.)
It's
a little like having to walk through a forest. Before
identifying each and every tree you are going to pass,
you want to know where the path begins, where it goes,
and where it ends. It's the most natural way to learn!
In
the following years, you can play the song again to
review the alphabet and assess which letters your children
still have difficulty saying and remembering.
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3.
Teach one letter at a time systematically, but don't
stop other language work in the meantime
Now
that you are singing the alphabet song, you can begin
introducing each letter individually. But don't stop
singing the song. Kids love to repeat songs and stories
they know, especially when it's a catchy familiar melody.
So begin every class with the alphabet song or at least
sing it sometime during every class.
Where
the alphabet is the same as the alphabet in the student's
first language, learning the letters will happen quickly.
Where the alphabet is different, be very patient and
take your time. A letter a week is not a bad proposition
— with a review week after every five or six letters.
In
New Parade 1, Unit 2, students begin the year by
making a set of alphabet flashcards. I suggest that
students make their own set of alphabet flashcards for
each level in the first four years of the program. In
the 20 pages of reference material in the beginning
of the New Parade Teacher's Edition, you will
find lots of suggestions for review games, dictations,
and other hands-on activities using these flashcards.
Use all these activities to constantly review and recycle
letter recognition and spelling.
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4. Present
and then practice each letter using all the senses;
students will benefit from experiencing the letter in
different ways through each of their senses
As
you teach each letter, be sure each student is able
to:
hear the letter;
see the letter;
say the letter;
touch the letter;
write the letter; and finally
read the letter.
This
'Golden Rule of Phonics' says that students need to
go through a series of steps which will allow them to
develop their own understanding of written language.
Again,
a set of alphabet flashcards for every student means
that you can do simple 'Show me' activities, such as
'Show me the letter 'a'!' or 'Show me two letters that
have a tall stick!' (referring to a letter with a long
vertical straight line) in order to review the letters.
When
each student has their own set of flashcards, this kind
of on-the-spot activity becomes easy and quick to do.
Just as important, it involves all the students and
helps them experience the letter through hearing and
seeing.
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5.
Decide if you want to teach just the lower-case letters
or the lower-case and the capital letters together and
in what order
I
often get asked about teaching lower-case and/or capital
letters. This is very much a personal decision.
I
have worked with teachers who teach only the lower-case
letters first; these teachers have their own order and
are convinced that this is the best way. Others present
both capital and lower-case letters together. A lot
depends on your teaching circumstances, the number of
hours of English instruction per day, the students'
familiarity with the alphabet, the age of the students,
and your comfort and familiarity with reading
instruction.
I
have found that the real issue with most children is
that they need repeated, constant exposure and time
to work and rework the letters. So my suggestion would
be that if this is a different alphabet for your students,
try not to introduce more than one letter a week —
the longer you can spend on a letter the better.
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6. Get parents
involved
Inform
parents about each letter you are working on. Send home
the activity page, plus suggestions for simple hands-on
letter games that parents can do with their children.
Parent
involvement is essential for success! The research shows
that the more you can involve the parents (even when
they do not speak English) or any other family members,
the more successful your students will be.
At
the beginning of every unit in the New Parade
Teacher's Edition, you will find the section Family
Connections, which has suggestions about how to
reach out and connect with the family at home. (Family
Connections also appears on the teaching pages for
the nine pull-out Little Books.)
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7. Have each
student make a 'letter framer' in class to look for
letters in the stories you are reading
Even
children who cannot read can find and recognize letters.
This is a key factor and one of the beginning steps
in learning to read.
Help
your students 'notice' the letters, where they appear,
and how they are found. This in turn will help students
discover and develop their own understanding of how
letters:
come together to make words,
which come together to make phrases,
which come together to make sentences,
which come together to make paragraphs,
which come together to make stories!
Letter
and word framers will help you accomplish this.
Letter
framers are easy to make. All you need is a strip of
paper:
1.
Ask students to draw an eye with a pupil on the right
side of the paper strip. The pupil of the eye should
be about the size of a dime.
2. Have the students cut out the pupil so that students
can see through the opening.
3. You now have a picture/letter/word framer.
By
passing the framer over the page, students can look
for and 'frame' the letter, word, or picture you have
asked them to notice.
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8. Read stories
aloud as often as you can
If
possible, begin or end every class with a read-aloud.
Be sure every student has his or her own little folder
or English portfolio to keep their little stories. You
can locate the stories easily, and students can work
on letter and word recognition.
The
English folder is also the place to keep the student's
letter framer, flashcards, and all other hands-on learning
tools that the students make with New Parade.
(For more information about working with portfolios/folders,
see page xix in the Teaching Techniques section
of a New Parade Teacher's Edition.)
In
New Parade, you have nine pull-out Little Books
for your students to make and read in class and at home.
In Starter and Level 1, we do not expect students to
be 'reading.' What we do expect and want to encourage
students to do is to 'retell' the story by looking at
the pictures, predicting what some of the words might
say, and even recognizing and identifying some of the
letters and words that appear under the pictures.
This
is a very important step in learning how to read. In
first language reading instruction, these steps help
form the beginning of the process of literacy development
that usually occurs in the child's kindergarten courses.
Most primary EFL courses do not provide opportunities
for children to begin retelling stories or to start
looking for, recognizing, and finally reading letters
and words.
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9. Invite
children to make books of all kinds
With
New Parade, you will find that the nine pull-out
Little Books do more than serve as a way to initiate
students to the reading process; they also serve to
present the new vocabulary learned in the unit in a
meaningful context — that context being the story.
Once
presented with this meaningful context where they can
see the language and how it is used, the students are
then encouraged to create their own stories following
the model of the unit story. Those students who are
not yet writing do not write. Those who are beginning
to write will label the pictures as best they can. Those
that are writing will write.
The
pedagogical value of book-making is that every student
regardless of level can make a book and begin his or
her own personal adventure of reading — wherever
the student is in the process of literacy development.
With
New Parade, we wanted to show and remind teachers
that a simple page folded in two becomes a book. Students
can make a letter book for each letter. You need nothing
more than one piece of paper for each child.
As
we have seen with New Parade, when children can
read their own personal books they have created, they
truly believe that they can read and write —
and that is when they really start to read and
write! You'll find lots of book-making ideas in the
Reach all Children activities in your Teacher's
Edition.
With
New Parade, it's all about the power and the
pride of saying and believing that 'I can do it!'
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10. Display
your children's personal best work
All
efforts are worthy of display. Every child succeeds
when we request their personal best!! If we can put
aside deciding if it is correct or incorrect and focus
on whether the child is doing his or her best, we'll
learn to make room for the individual differences in
learning that are part of every classroom anywhere in
the world.
Suggestions
on how to display your students' personal best work
can be found in the unit opener of every unit, in the
section called Bulletin Board Ideas (and in the
two-page teaching spread found with the story).
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11. Don't
worry! Be patient, accepting, and tolerant of individual
differences
You
will undoubtedly have some children who are slower than
others at remembering the names of the letters, identifying
the letters, remembering and identifying the sounds
the letters make, and correctly writing the letters.
When this happens, relax, take a deep breath and remember
that beginning to learn to read and write letters is
a very personal process — like learning how to
walk, and speaking those first words. Just as each of
us learns things at different speeds, so do our students
who are beginning to read.
You'll
be far more successful encouraging your student 'to
try again,' 'to keep up the good work,' and ' to keep
at it' than if you point out every time they get a letter
wrong, say a letter incorrectly, or can't recognize
it.
Support
them and encourage them to try, try, and try again!!!
Success will come if the emphasis is on trying
and not on perfection. Children need space, time and
lots and lots of encouragement and support to develop
at their own pace and rhythm.
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12. Celebrate
your children's successes!
Grasp
every opportunity you can to celebrate a success! These
are big steps for little learners and they need to be
recognized and celebrated. Plus, celebrating is fun!!
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