Letter names

What is this skill?

Letter names are exactly what they sound like: knowing that this shape is called B and that one is called M. A kindergartner has two jobs here. The first is to recognize each letter when it is named. The second is the harder one, matching the two forms of each letter. Every letter has an uppercase shape and a lowercase shape, and for some pairs, like A and a or G and g, the two look nothing alike. To a five-year-old they are separate shapes that happen to share a name.

In this practice, children see a big letter and find its small partner, see a small letter and find its big partner, listen for a letter and tap it, and sort a set of letters into big and small. The hardest questions ask them to look closely at small b, p and q, and to put a short run of letters, such as E, F, G, H, in alphabet order.

Why it matters

Letter names give children and teachers a shared way to talk about print. When a teacher says "this word starts with a B," the sentence means nothing to a child who does not know which shape B is. Names also carry useful hints, because many letter names contain the letter sound: say the name of B or T and you can hear the sound at the start.

Lowercase matters more than many parents expect. Children often arrive at school knowing capitals from alphabet songs and toys, but books are printed almost entirely in lowercase. A child who knows only A, B and C has a lot of shapes still to learn before a page of text looks familiar. Once letters are recognized without effort, attention is free for sounds and words.

Common mistakes

• Swapping b, d, p and q. These are one shape turned or flipped, and until now every object your child has met stayed the same thing when it was turned around: a cup upside down is still a cup. This is normal for a kindergartner. Point to where the belly sits and name it each time.
• Treating a big and small letter as different letters. A child may think of G and g as unrelated. Name them together, "big G, small g," so the link is heard again and again.
• Singing the alphabet without knowing the letters. Many children can sing it perfectly and still cannot name a letter on its own, and l-m-n-o-p often comes out as one long word. Point to letters out of order to see what your child really knows.

How to help at home

• Write a few big letters on sticky notes and the small partners on others, then hide them around one room. Your child finds a note, then hunts for its partner.
• Go on a letter hunt in a cereal box or a picture book: find every small g on one page. Short hunts on one letter teach more than a tour of the whole alphabet.
• Start with the letters in your child's name. They are the ones children care about most, and they give you a natural way to talk about big and small: the first letter is big, the rest are small.
• For b and d, make the two shapes in the air or with a finger on the table, saying the name each time. Keep it to a minute, and stop while it is still fun.

Worked examples

These are real questions from the Tutorsaurus letter names practice, with the answers worked out.

1. Example 1

   Find the matching small letter.

   S

   Choices: s, c, z

   Answer: s. Big S and small s have the same curvy shape. Small s is just smaller.

2. Example 2

   Sort the big and small letters.

   To sort: A, b, C, d, E, f

   Answer: Big letters: A, C, E · Small letters: b, d, f. A, C and E are big letters. b, d and f are small letters.

3. Example 3

   Put the letters in ABC order.

   The pieces, mixed up: F / H / E / G

   Answer: E F G H. After D comes E, F, G, H.

Printable worksheet (PDF) — one page of questions from this practice that work on paper, easier ones first, with an answer key on page 2. Free to print, no sign-up.