North Carolina Early Learning and Development Progressions: Birth to Five

Domain: NC Foundations for Early Learning: Language Development and Communication (LDC)

Subdomain: Foundations for Reading

Goal: Children begin to develop knowledge of the alphabet and the alphabetic principle.

Skill Progression: Develop knowledge of the alphabet and the alphabetic principle

Age: 33-36 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 33-36 Months.

Recognizes the A-B-C song and sings it, but without knowing what letters are

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe the child and adult singing the A-B-C song.

Elicitation Strategy

First see if the child knows the song and can sing it independently. If the child is shy or doesn’t want to sing it alone, the adult can join in.

Behavior Observed

If the child has heard the song sung many times, she remembers some of the letters and sequence. The child who knows the song may combine LMNOP as if it is one letter.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

The alphabet song is a good introduction to the alphabet. Early childhood educators and parents can help children understand how it is associated with the letters, by singing it with a visual of the alphabet. The adult can then point to each letter as it is sung. This will help children learn the names of the letters.

 North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, 2015

©2015 by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.