Upper case or lower case when teaching reading?

There are many studies completed about this. You can read these for yourselves if you wish. 

I disagree with many of these studies. I sometimes wonder if teachers themselves have conducted these studies or if they have been conducted by people who don’t even work with children. 

I’m here to share with you my insights and my beliefs based on the thousands of children that I have taught over the last 20 years. I’ m here to share with you what I’ve seen to work very well and what I’ve seen that has not worked very well. Remember that we teach hundreds of children every single year here at CMT. We see what works. We see what does not. 

When teaching very early reading, knowledge of the alphabet is obviously fundamental. 

But it is also highly complex (surprising huh?). 

Do you teach the letter sounds or the letter names or do you teach both? 

Here at CMT, we teach our students the letter sounds first. 

We do not mention the letter names for a very long time. 

When teaching early reading, children need to know the pure sounds first. No one cares about the letter names when it comes to reading. In fact it will slow your child’s reading progress significantly if you are teaching the letter names first. And it will be so confusing for your child. This will lead to frustration and delay their reading progress. 

There are times children join me perhaps late in the year and with only a few months left to prepare for their 4+ and sadly because they have been taught the letter names of the alphabet first, they have not been able to learn how to read before their 4+ assessments. And for some 4+ assessments, children need to demonstrate that they know how to read - whether they tell you that this is the case or not. 

Do you teach upper case or lower case letters individually or do you teach them simultaneously?

Here at CMT, we teach lower case first. We focus on lower case because when children read, 95% of the words on the page will be lower case (perhaps slightly less but you know what I mean). We laser focus on teaching the lower case sounds first. Only when children have mastered every single sound do we introduce capital letters. 

Reading progress is accelerated significantly using this process. 

Yes, it’s a little frustrating that my proficient 3 year old reader sometimes stumbles on the capital letters - especially the ones that don’t look like the lower case letters. However, it will take me a couple of weeks of targeted a focused learning to support him with learning his capital letters and honestly, each day that I read with him, he is identifying them more and more confidently. 

Need support with teaching your little one how to read? 

My Curriculum Acceleration Programme will be perfect for you.