Lively Letters
We are so excited to tell you that your child is going to be enjoying the Lively Letters program this year! For over 30 years, the Lively Letters program has been helping students learn to read and overcome reading challenges with colorful images of characters embedded into letter shapes, music, hand and mouth cues, and funny stories that make learning easier and more fun. This program, developed by Reading with TLC, is recognized internationally for using proven strategies that align with the science of reading with child-friendly methods and materials that have students smiling while they learn. We call that a win-win situation!
Your child will typically be introduced to these adorable letter characters in pairs, as the letter sounds are grouped with other letter sounds that are made similarly in the mouth. We will be talking about what we do with our mouths when we make the letter sounds and then learning little tricks that easily link the sound to the letter shape. We have a feeling that your child will be coming home and teaching YOU how to make the letter sounds that they've been introduced to. Because of all the memory tricks in this program, children find it much easier to learn their letter sounds and are ready sooner to start building words for reading and spelling.
Once your child has learned a group of consonants and a few vowel sounds, we will start the word play activities. This is the most exciting part of learning to read and spell! We will be putting out a word and then changing one letter or one sound at a time to build new words to read and spell. This activity builds critical phonemic (sound) awareness and phonics skills, as well as speech production skills, and prepares your child for fluent reading and spelling. Having strong skills in these areas will make it easier for your child to develop vocabulary and comprehension skills later. The words we work with will follow the rules of phonics and we will sometimes be working with nonsense words to ensure that children are actually sounding out words instead of guessing at them or recalling words they've memorized. Don't be alarmed if you see your child pointing to the letters in the words they read as this is a temporary way to help them focus on their new phonics skills.
You can watch a free 90 minute recorded overview webinar of Reading with TLC's Lively Letters program that you can view on demand any time you'd like to get a closer look at this popular approach. This free recorded webinar can be found by visiting www.readingwithtlc.com. On the website, under Training, click on Free Overviews and Webinars.
We expect that you will see great growth this year and we know your child will be very happy to share their new reading and spelling skills with you!