It’s important to think about how many different ways we can help students practice words. One way I’ve found extremely effective is using abc order activities. Teaching students how to arrange words in alphabetical order has always helped my students.
Today, I was having a conversation with my sister. My sister is an intervention teacher in central Florida. We were chatting about a new product line I’m working on for word study and how I am experiencing writers block with blog posts. Anyways, she made a comment about teaching alphabetical order wasn’t as useful in the upper grades. I instantly went into all of the reasons why ABC order is still helpful. She said “Bingo, you have a new blog post idea”. Funny how siblings know each other so much. You see, she knew if she disagreed with me, I’d list all of the reasons it still worked.
ABC Order activities help students who often “guess and go”. Have you ever had a student who sees a CVC Word and incorrectly reads the ending? For example for “cat” they say “car”. Students are often not reading all the way through the word. I break students of this by providing more ABC order activities, even to the third letter as young as first grade. This strategy helps students who just guess on words because it forces them to read all the way through the word.
Another reason why arranging words in alphabetical order is helpful is because it helps students with decoding. As students read the words they are naturally breaking them apart. I have found great success with using alphabetical order for struggling readers. This strategy also gives students more opportunities with letter print recognition.
Alphabetical Order activities also help students think critically. They are able to use these strategies to help students with decoding while teaching them important critical skills at the same time.
Ways to use ABC ORDER
ABC Order activities are great for word study, spelling, vocabulary. You can help students who often just skip over parts of the word when decoding. If you need additional words to practice alphabetical order, please message me on Facebook.
I put a list together of items I use to help students who struggle with decoding and reading all the way through the word. Check that out here. I also use this puzzle and it’s always a hit!
