The Letter A
The Letter A
The letter A is one of the first letters children learn because it is the first letter in the alphabet. When children sing their ABCs in preschool and Kindergarten, the letter A heads the bill. Children learn to say and sing the letter A, and they learn words that begin with A: apple, are, all. When identifying letters, capital A’s distinctive shape makes it difficult to confuse with any other letter. However, it may take some time for children to learn to form a lowercase a in writing. Students may be unsure how to orient the flat side of the letter. With practice, children will learn to consistently place the flat side on the right. In reading, letter recognition can be a little slower with a lowercase A because print fonts use two different-looking forms. The upright form looks like this: a. It’s the form found in most books and printed materials. The italic form looks like this: a. This is the form students learn to write. The letter A can make a short or a long sound when spoken. As phonemic awareness grows, students learn to identify the short A sound with words like “cat” and “apple”. They learn to identify the long A sound with words like “cake” or “pay”. Help students identify a long vowel sound by reminding them that a long a “says its name”. With practice, your students will learn to identify, write, and read the letter A.