Letter recognition is an important first step in learning to read and write. However, one problem that emerging readers invariably face, is having to recognize variations in how letters are written. There wouldn’t be too many primary grade teachers who haven’t had a student point to a letter in a book written in a different font and ask, “What’s that one?” This is why it is crucial that students begin to explore different fonts and prints to support their early reading skills development.
Maybe you have a font you use all the time in your classroom, and everyone in your school may be using the D’Nealian or Zaner-Bloser methods to teach handwriting. Still, it is only a matter of time before an emerging reader will come across an unfamiliar “a” or “g” in a library book or while reading at home with their parents or guardians. It may not be the greatest of pedagogical crises, but it does make clear it is important for your letter recognition lessons to expose students to these variations and to explicitly identify them when the opportunity presents itself.
Here are a few ideas on how to do just that!
Using Different Fonts to Enhance Letter Recognition
Identifying Letter Styles in Reading Activities
If a book or worksheet has letters written in a font that is different from how they are taught in class, it could easily be used to help expose children to the variations. For example, in a guided reading lesson, the teacher could point to the letter and ask a series of questions about it.
For example:
- What is this letter?
- How do you know?
- How does it look the same as the one we use?
- What are the differences?
Similarly, a guided reading session could include the following activity:
Instruct your students to look at a particular page. Encourage them to find a letter, for example, find any letter g’s on the page. Then, get your students to point to them.
Ask the following questions:
- How do you know it is a g?
- How does it look the same as the g we use?
- What are the differences?
Again, these activities encourage discussion and can incorporate meta-language around letter formation/recognition and reinforce the key characteristics of the letters being learned.
Letter ‘Snap’
Early readers tend to recognize more uppercase letters than lowercase, and primary learners are more apt to fall back on uppercase letters in early handwriting. Do you know the game Snap? Why not use it for comparing and recognizing the same letters in different fonts? Our Giant Letter Tiles – Lowercase and Giant Letter Tiles – Uppercase are available in a variety of different fonts.
We printed four different fonts of the lowercase and uppercase letters — approximately 10 to a page — to get the right size for a game of Snap! This activity is great for not only comparing different fonts but also for making the connections between upper and lowercase letters.
Create a Letter Display Activity
Young learners could design ways of showing all the variations of a particular letter as an individual or in small group work. This task lends itself to hands-on and/or investigative learning and has many cross-curricular links.
Some examples might be:
- Look for a particular letter in magazines or newspapers (remember those?), cut them out and glue them on a sheet of paper.
- Incorporate technology by using a word processing program. Have students create a document and type a particular letter in various fonts.
- Look for a particular letter in different books from the classroom or the library. Have them copy, trace and/or make the different letters for a display.
The resulting work could be used for a “letter art show,” oral presentations, or even a classroom bulletin board that students can make reference to.
Letters in Real Life!
It isn’t just books that use different fonts. Quite often, advertising materials and product packaging contain letters in different fonts within the same small space!
Another fun activity to help your students recognize letters would be to have them bring in catalogs and packaging (e.g. boxes, clean food wrappers, plastic containers with labels) and then become “letter detectives,” trying to discover letters in different fonts on the same object. You might be surprised how easy they are to find!
Letter Sort
A great way to help students learn the alphabet is through letter sorting and matching activities in your reading centers.
This Alphabet Matching Caterpillar Activity is a popular letter recognition resource and is also easily adapted to incorporate learning letters in different fonts. Download the letter page in several fonts and add them to the activity to make it an even more robust letter learning experience!
Exposing students to the variations in letter formation is a necessary step in creating able readers. In an ideal world, there would be one consistent way to write and read our letters but English is a complex language and is often as diverse as the people who speak it. Fortunately, we live in modern times where differences are recognized and celebrated as they enhance our experience and understanding of the world we live in. Applying a similar mindset to letter recognition will only enhance the experience and understanding of literacy in our youngest learners.
Explore hundreds of printable and digital reading resources in our reading collection.
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