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Working with Letters and Sounds: Starting with the Alphabet

Emergent readers and writers need to learn the letters of the alphabet and their names.  They also need to learn the sounds that letters make – starting with the most common sound for each letter. The guidelines below are designed to help you decide where your student(s) are at, and then provide appropriate intervention for their level.

Click to download handout (updated in January 2026)

The Working with Letters, Sounds and Words Continuum presents similar information in a different layout, with a row for writing the names of each student.  The continuum also includes information about learning goals and strategies.

Click to sownload the Letters, sounds and words Continuum Guide to Teaching (updated Jan 2026)

Early emergent students are at the beginning of their alphabet learning.  They need instruction with a focus on letter names.  Letter names provide a single label for each letter which makes it easier for the students to learn the alphabet than letter sounds. Letter names have “a single mnemonic peg to hang the letter shape on” whereas letter sounds can have multiple labels for a letter.

We should always target at least two letters of the week. All the research into this area shows that a single letter of the week is not effective. This is partly because targeting a single letter of the week means students don’t have to think about the letters – if our letter of the week is ‘b’ and we ask a student “which letter does bus start with” then they don’t have to think about it. However, if we have two letters of the week, for example ‘b’ and ‘m’, and we ask the same question, the student has to think to answer it, which results in more learning. Additionally, it is easier to learn about the characteristics of ‘b’ when we compare it with ‘m’ – one is tall and the other is short. One has a short, plosive sound and the other has a longer sound that vibrates when we say it, etc.

There is no set order for teaching the alphabet. However, here are a couple of handouts about selecting which letters to teach:

It is important that we realise that some students will be learning the alphabet for a while and we need to have enough different activities to keep engaging them. Alphabet sorts are a really valuable activity because they require students to think and discriminate but they are only one example of activities we should do with the alphabet. Teaching (and Learning) the Alphabet: Playing with Letters Shapes and Sounds is a blog post that will give you some ideas – and there are also lots on Pinterest and on TeacherPayTeachers.

The handout below runs through the range of letter and sound activities that should be used throughout a week with students at this level – and the other pages provide an example of a weekly program.

Click to download the handout (updated January 2026)

For some more information about using Letter Sorts as referenced in the handout, please see the section on letter sorts below.

Alphabet Resources to Download

Here’s some example alphabet activities you can download. If you need resources for a student with CVI and/or physical disability, see the section below.

Activities to go with the Letters and Sounds Cards

Students with CVI and Physical Disability

Many teachers ask about letters and sounds activities for students at a similar level of alphabet knowledge who have a cortical vision impairment and who may not be able to use their hands to manipulate alphabet activities.  The handout below runs through suggested activities across a week and then offers a detailed weekly plan on pages 2, 3 and 4.

Click image to download handout. Updated May 2026.

Alphabet resources for students with a Cortical Vision Impairment and physical disability

Alphabet Books from Tar Heel Reader in High Contrast

Our Alphabet Book template (high contrast)

Letter Sorts for Students who Know Less than 50% of the Alphabet

Click to Download. Modified October 2024

The handout above takes you through further information about alphabet sorts.   For students who know less than 50% of the alphabet, we would focus on letter sorts.  The files below can be used to create letter sort bags for use in this activity.

Files for letter sorts:

Letters and Sounds Record form

Name Wall & Word Wall handout

Sometimes we get questions about the difference between a name wall (for emergent students) and a word wall (for conventional students). The handout below explains the differences.

Click to download. Updated September 2026.

Emergent Students who know more than 50% of the alphabet need to continue with alphabet instruction – but we would increase to 5 letters per week and use the Explicit Alphabet Instruction Routine to focus on a letter per day. During the week we also need to build in some activities that ask the student to sort letters as well, using the 5 letters of the week.

The handout below runs through the range of letter and sound activities that should be used throughout a week with students at this level – and on the second page provides an example of a weekly program.

Click to download: Updated Jan 2026
Click to download: Updated Jan 2026

Explicit Alphabet Instruction Routine

The Explicit Alphabet Instruction Routine (EAIR), also known as Enhanced Alphabet Knowledge (EAK), was developed as a way to efficiently consolidate alphabet knowledge with students in their first year at school. It moves quickly through the alphabet, focusing on a letter per day. Part of the routine is a script that you follow each day, moving through the alphabet 6 times in a different order – these are known as the 6 cycles. The original program was designed to be done with large groups, but we are often implementing it with small groups. For this reason the cycle guide suggests a review at the end of cycle 2. Once you are confident that all your students know a specific letter e.g. G, then you can remove it from future cycles.

A range of resources for implementing the EAIR are below:

Letter Sorts for Students who know more than 50% of the alphabet

Click to Download. Modified October 2024

Phonemic and Phonological Awareness

Emergent students who know more than 50% of the alphabet should also be doing phonological and phonemic awareness activities.   We are aiming to help students hear that speech is made up of smaller pieces – words, syllables and sounds.  Individuals with complex communication needs are particularly at risk for having difficulty in developing these skills so we need to be proactive and target this skill explicitly.   There are some general activities you can do to encourage this included in the files below, but the most important is onset rime. 

Onset rime has been shown to be one of the most effective strategies we can use to build phonemic awareness. Children with CCN may have difficulties developing phonemic awareness so we usually start tackling this once a student knows about half the alphabet.

The handout below provides further information about word families and also provides an example of a week of using word families for phonemic awareness.

Click to download. Updated January 2026.

As well as the handout above, I have also created an app for working on onset rime. At this stage, it only covers 15 word families, but over time it will expand. You can access it at https://wordfampa.com/.

As well the the website, I have provided a 15 week program for using it, to support students.

You can also download or print all resources from the website to create non-electronic resources if needed. Alternatively, there are a bunch of options below.

Word Families for phonemic awareness handout (shown above; updated in January 2026)

Word family picture kits.  These go through each word family, providing pictures as well as letters to do onset rime activities. 

  • Set 1 (easiest word families)
  • Set 2
  • Set 3
  • Word family folders –  three onset rime folders, similar to the one being used in the video below (please note: we are getting a lot more success with the picture kits above than the letters only)

The video below shows a teacher reading an word family book and using the folder to draw attention to the word family.

Additional Activities

Love & Reilly (2009) published a book called A Sound Way which includes a range of activities for improving phonological and phonemic awareness.  Some of the activities in this text will need modifications to be used with individuals with Complex Communication Needs (CCN) and example modified activities are below – both from A Sound Way and other sources. Please note: there is growing research that phonemic awareness is the most important skill for literacy development.  At this stage, we are not sure how much this applies to students who need AAC.

Example Phonological and Phonemic Awareness Activities for Students who need AAC

  • Auditory word sorts – similar to the visual sorts above, but in this version there are no labels for the pictures. students need to listen to the words and sort by initial sound (updated Jan 2023)
  • Rhyme in Threes – students need to pick the word that rhymes from the second row and move it up to the gap in the second row (created October 2021)
  • Eye Spy Sounds – using the pictures on the page, play “I spy with my little eye, something beginning with….” (created October 2021)
  • Sound Scavenger Hunt – each sheet is accompanied by pictures which can be placed around a room and then students can do a sound based scavenger hunt (created October 2021)
  • Animal Rhymes – find the animal in the group of three at the bottom that rhymes with the animal at the top (created October 2021)
  • Animal Rhymes High Contrast – same as above in high contrast (Created August 2024)
  • Rhyming Pictures – draw a line between two pictures that rhyme (created October 2021)
  • The Longest Word – listen to the words and pick the longest one (created October 2021)
  • Word Puzzles – which two shorter words go together to make a longer word? (created October 2021)
  • Rhyme Bingo – cards to print (created June 2025)

Late emergent students know a lot of the alphabet and need to work on consolidating their knowledge.  Continue to use the Enhanced Alphabet Routine Script (Jones, Clark & Reutzel, 2013) if the student is still consolidating letter names and sounds.  By this stage,  you would only do the script with the letters they still need to learn.  You may also concentrate on pairs that they confuse by either sound or appearance e.g. m and n as per the guidelines in Cycle 6.

The handout below runs through the range of letter and sound activities that should be used throughout a week with students at this level – and on the second page provides an example of a weekly program.

Click to Download
Updated January 2026

For these students, also make sure you continue with work on onset rime. If the student is hearing initial sounds in words easily, then move onto final sounds.

If you are working on final sounds in onset rime, here are some resources

Working with Letters and Sounds – Other Resources

Working with Letters, Sounds & Words in our Classrooms Overview Sheet
Working with Letters, Sounds and Words Self-Evaluation Forms for Educators
Working with Letters and Sounds Blog Posts from Jane Farrall