Tricks needed for converting Alphabet to memory

My daughter does the same thing. I thought it was just the nature of the beast. I have adult friends who can only do the alphabet if they sing it….

If they haven’t stored them in memory by high school try skipping this task. Tape the alphabet to their desk, plaster it on the walls, make sheets they can put in their notebooks. There is too much other stuff to learn to waste time on things like the alphabet. Yeah, they’ll have trouble looking up phone numbers but they can use their cheat sheets. So kids will never learn their times tables or their alphabet - forget it. It is abstract and meaningless for them. Someday they may derive meaning and work to acquire the knowledge, but for now, move to more important things. Forget alphabetizing words - what is the point of that? Read and write, read and write, read and write, read and write ….

So what is so wrong with repeating the alphabet from the beginning? He *does* have it in his memory, he just doesn’t have random access yet. True, this is a bit slow, but considering how often you have to alphabetize words it is not a real problem. I believe I was in high school or later myself before I could random access the alphabet. I’d say let it go. Stick a copy of the alphabet (one of those printing guides has a double use for improving writing) in the back cover of a binder if needed, but this just isn’t something big enough to worry over.

You can also divide the alphabet into sections and have the kiddo learn which section differnet letters are in… so that when he sees “P” he can mutter “HIJKLMNO>..P” instead of starting at A. For some reason doing it via the song usually goes faster, too.

To teach the alphabet sequence we often had cards with chunks of the alphabet (abc def ghi jlk) for the kids to put in order. Just seeing it in order often and well and working with that stuff in their heads really helped.

Half the time, I have to tell the students to get away from letter names when they are reading. When I ask them for the sound for a letter, they tell me the letter name. Why should you do an exercise on alphabetizing words? The letter names get in way for reading, teach them to read and then work on the letter names if you are teaching them to spell.

Knowing alphabetical order has many applications (like looking things up in a dictionary or the yellow pages).

You are absolutely right Sue! But what I was trying to convey was that these skills are useless if the students can’t read. I, am in the process of remediating a 10 yr old girl that has had a real problem understanding that the letter names and the sounds are different. After she understands that, I intend on teaching her how to use the dictionary and Thesarus.

I understand that there are many other things that are considered more important to his education, and I am definitely not focusing on this one aspect during our sessions. I was just curious to see if anyone had any suggestions to make this area easier for him. I just picked up the “Gallon Guy” theory for him and my kids to use, and thought that with the wealth of knowledge everyone else had, that there might be some more “tricks of the trade” that I could pick up!
Thank you for your suggestions!!!!!!!

Nobody here meant to put you off, but we were mostly trying to talk about priorities. Alphabetizing is a useful skill but so minor in how much time you spend on it that spending a lot of time making it more efficient is just not productive; if he knows the alphabet from the beginning and can use it when he needs it, that’s enough. The “trick of the trade” we were all trying to get at is setting your priorities and letting go when it isn’t a vital issue.

Nici,
I know what you mean. While it is not one of the main skills we teach it is something we touch on and if you happen to come up with a quick trick for teaching it or helping them to learn it so it is easier for the students to at least have some background - let me know -as I will you.

Right now a couple of my readers are so dependent on the visual alphabet in my room to gain a clue to the phonetic sounds to the letters and they still start with A as well. By the time they get there, they have forgotten other information they were trying to store in short-term memory.

This year I am going to try an alphabet card instead of strips to see if they can visually sort through that faster. (4x5) I will let you know.