Letter knowledge

Letter knowledge

Letter knowledge is understanding that letters look different from one another and have their own name and sound. It encompasses everything involved in helping a child learn to identify letter names and sounds.

Ideas to promote an awareness of letters

• Focus on the letters in his or her name and identify other words that start with the same letter. 

• Identify the difference between letters and numbers using different sorting or matching activities.

• Point out letters as you are reading with your child – can you find another letter that looks the same? Can you find any of the letters in your name?

• Ask your child to identify letters in their environment, at the park or the shops.

• Start with letters that are important to your child, such as their initial, or those with an interesting shape which makes them easy to recognise.

• Use letter sounds rather than names to begin with - 'a for ant', not 'ay for ape'. Letter sounds are more useful at the beginning and letter names will follow.

• Create letters using different materials, with play dough, sticks, in shaving foam, ribbon or stones for example.

• Encourage your child to handle letter shapes - magnetic letters, foam letters, sticker letters or wooden jigsaw letters for example.  Can you find a letter that looks like this (show an a)?  Can you find a B (say the letter)?

• Children should understand that letters have a name that is different to the sound that it makes – the alphabet song for example, teaches the letter names and not the sound the letter makes. 

• Play letter games – draw a letter on your child’s back or in the air and see if they can guess which one it is or try to match a lowercase letter to the uppercase equivalent.