Beginning to write and read with Letter Stories

I came across a resource last week that I would love to try out-- but alas, I have no pre-readers to try it out on!  Jill Pike's Printing With Letter Stories  ($19, Institute for Excellence in Writing) is a set of reproducible, ready-to-go lessons for teaching letters.  Each letter is introduced with a funny picture and a "story" (one or two lines) that cleverly helps the student remember how to form the letter as well as a sound that it represents.  From the IEW website:  Example: The letter c is the happy letter, because he is a cookie that someone bit: c, c, cookie! The letter o is the sad letter, because he is a cookie that nobody bit. He says, “Ah,” (short o sound) “nobody took a bite out of me!”

The little stories in this program remind me of Times Tales, a resource for for memorizing multiplication facts.  One of my students said Times Tales made the facts "sticky," so they would stay in her brain.  I suspect Letter Stories will make learning to read "sticky" for many currently frustrated children.

Printing with Letter Stories includes a lesson for each new letter, and after every few letters there is a review.  Initially, the letters are copied into squares-- which I think is a super idea, much easier than trying to form the letters on a line or a group of lines.  The lesson plans include introducing secondary sounds and capital letters, and there are games along the way. By lesson 20, the student begins copying simple words (and since he knows the sounds of the words, he can easily read them), and later transitions into writing on lines.  By the end of the book (lesson 45), students are writing complete sentences.

This resource is not necessary for every child, of course-- many learn their letters and sounds effortlessly simply by being read to-- hearing Dr Seuss' ABC over and over, for example-- and have little trouble writing the letters once their hands can hold a pencil.  However, for those who could use some fun infused into their early literacy endeavors, I heartily recommend this resource!

As a follow-up to this program, I would advise checking out Reading Reflex, a wonderful hands-on program which will introduce sounds represented by two or more letters, words with two or more syllables, and longer stories for your child to read.  The two programs combined are less than $40 and, in my opinion, take a child from complete beginner through at least the second grade reading/writing level, if not further.