In your manual, find the Table of Contents for the Letter Learning lessons. In these lessons, students learn how to correctly write all the letters. On this page, we see the order in which we teach them. This order was decided upon by considering reading series’ scope and sequence, getting vowels in early in order to build words to write, and also frequency of letter usage in the English language. That is why we start with “m” and “t”, add “a” quickly, and move through the letters to end with the letters “q” and “x”. The papers the students do will have the same writing style that your particular school uses. We realize that this will move faster than the letters are introduced in reading, but in order to get all the letters in and move to sentences, we need to do this.
If you look at the column that says “script”, you will notice that during the third lesson you will use a supplemental script for the lesson. It is a shortened script that is provided after a lesson is taught twice. We found after doing the lesson twice, you don’t need a detailed script to complete the lesson. So looking at this lesson strand, you will use the same supplemental script for LL-3 through LL-13. You will find that this same pattern of introduce, practice, and complete runs through all of the lesson strands. Once you have taught the first and second lessons, the other lessons in the strand follow the same pattern.
Worksheet Format
- Lesson Overview: students learn to correctly form the target letters.
- Students coach on place, size, and shape.
After teaching the students how to coach and practicing switching papers for coaching, the class should be ready to learn how to correctly write lowercase letters. Above is a sample of the Letter Learning worksheets. Notice that two letters are taught in the lesson, one on the left, and another on the right. All of the icons have been taught, and students continue to use these as they coach. Each letter is practiced and coached three times. Take a look at one box on the page. In each box, there are two handwriting lines. The first is for the initial attempt at writing the letter, which is then coached by a partner. The second handwriting line is called the “Fix It Line,” which is used to try again after hearing feedback from the coach.
View the videos below to see an entire Letter Learning Lesson.
LL-1 Warm Up and I Do
LL-1 We Do
LL-1 You Do
