K-Readiness

Letter name recognition upon K-entry is highly predictive of reading success, and, widely considered the starting point for preschool alphabet instruction in standards, assessments, and curriculums yet children don’t read with the letter names. Beginning letter-sound knowledge is also critical for decoding and recognizing words (e.g. Ehri, 2014). Per the Common Core/Next Generation standards, many preschool educators worry about making the early childhood curriculum too academic, and that alphabet learning shouldn’t take time away from developmental play and discovery-based learning. The innovative Sunform method enables students as young as four to learn enhanced alphabet knowledge (all 26 names AND sounds, and letter formation) in the same amount of time that conventional methods/programs take learning capital and lower case letter names per early childhood standards, conventions, and popular curriculums.

Ehri, L.C. (2014) Orthographic mapping in the acquisition of sight word reading, spelling memory, and vocabulary learning. Scientific Studies of Reading 18(1).

The students in the video below were part of the fall semester 4 year old kindergarten treatment group described in: Massengill Shaw, D., & Sundberg, M.L. (2008). At-risk preschoolers become beginning readers with neurologically integrated alphabet instruction. Journal of Education Research, 2(1), 61-73, and this CPS preschool Case Study 2014. These students are shown beginning to read simple decodable sentences following one semester of daily 15 minute lessons.