Three Ways to Use an Alphabet Arc for Sequencing

Today's blog is part 1 of a 3 part series on alphabet tasks you can incorporate into your lessons to build sequence knowledge and other literacy skills.

Hi friends. When we hear about letter knowledge, the first thing that may come to mind is the ability to say the alphabet letters, sing the ABCs, and recognize letters in print. However, there is so much more that we can do to promote letter knowledge in connection to reading and spelling using an alphabet arc.

What is an Alphabet Arc?

An alphabet arc is a tool used to build student knowledge of letter sequence and promote the learning of the many skills surrounding letter identification, reading, and spelling. These are easy to scaffold as students gain automaticity in their letter recognition and ordering skills. There are several ways to scaffold instruction and provide a gradual release of responsibility with alphabet arcs. Tools you will need for instruction with the alphabet arc: alphabet arc, plastic letters or paper letters. I like using plastic letters so students can gain the tactile feel of the letter shape. Read about the 4 properties of a letter HERE. 

Research has shown that letter knowledge is a strong predictor of reading success. Additionally, knowing letter names provides a springboard for learning and remembering letter-sound relationships. Here are some tips:

Begin with the most support 

Choose an arc that has all of the letters outlined. This will provide students with a visual representation of the letter sequence to support matching as they build the alphabet. You can find these in both upper-and-lower-case sets as well as Spanish sets. (alphabet arc from Neuhaus Education Center, plastic letters from alphabetletter.com)

Gradual release of support

As students become familiar with the alphabet sequence, use an arc that has only the anchor letters, A-MN-Z. We will discuss anchor letters more in-depth later in this blog. This gradual release of support provides students the opportunity to pull from their memory the alphabet sequence. Here, the student is putting out the anchor letters to begin sequencing the alphabet. 

Below is the alphabet arc from abecedarian with just the anchor letters-showing that gradual release support. 

Removing supports with the gradual release

Use an alphabet strip to have the student create the arc. Here students can still reference the alphabet to assist in the sequencing, but the support of the letter matching and anchor letters has been removed. I continue to have my students identify the anchor letters, tell me the number of letters in the alphabet, and identify the two kinds of letters: vowels and consonants. At this stage, I also have my students name the vowel letters prior to placing the letters out. Below is an example of alphabet sequencing and identification of vowel letters. 

Using an explicit model, with the gradual release of responsibility, provides the framework for understanding the importance of supporting students with their learning and then gradually releasing this support.

Explicit instruction makes lessons clearer to students by teaching skills in a sequential way, modeling what is needed, and providing ample opportunities for practice, all while providing immediate, corrective feedback as needed. This type of instruction is essential for struggling readers and aligns with what we know about how we learn to read 📖. It sequentially provides students with the skills to build a solid foundation for their reading house. 

Letter Knowledge 

When we work with the alphabet letters, we begin laying the building blocks for recognizing those orthographic patterns within our printed language. Letter recognition is part of the reading process and lays the foundation for learning the alphabetic principle. 

Letter knowledge provides students with names and the knowledge that letters represent sounds in our spoken language. Linnea Ehri discussed in her work that "letter name knowledge not only helps students infer sounds but also helps students remember those sounds". In addition, letter knowledge is needed for the orthographic mapping process. Orthographic mapping is the process of connecting letters in the spellings of words to sounds in their pronunciations.

While letter knowledge alone is not sufficient for good word reading, students who know letter names have an advantage for understanding the alphabetic principle, the understanding that letter and letter patterns represent the spoken sounds in our language.  

Sequencing the Alphabet 

Some students need explicit instruction and concrete practice with letter sequencing. Using an alphabet arc can provide a multi-sensory approach to many skills if you teach students to name and sequence the alphabet letters. 

Here are 3 ways to teach and reinforce the alphabet sequence with your students using alphabet arcs:

 1. Anchor the Alphabet

Many learners with dyslexia struggle with sequencing tasks. Helping students "anchor" their alphabet can assist with this sequencing recall and later link to alphabetizing and dictionary work. 

Identify the anchor letters.

If you think about our alphabet, we know that the initial letter is A, and the final letter is Z. We also have two letters precisely in the middle, M and N. We can see this connection to work in a dictionary, we have the first half of the alphabet A-M and the second half of the alphabet N-Z.  

I have my students place these "anchor" letters on their alphabet arcs before sequencing the remaining letters. Why? Like an anchor holds a ship in place, these anchor letters help keep our alphabet in the correct sequence. 

I made THIS resource for my students who need practice with this skill in a multi-sensory way. If you are teaching students to name the sequence of the alphabet letters, this mini-lesson and chart helps students anchor learning and can be used to reference both reading and spelling applications. 

Make it multi-sensory

Students should say the letter name as they place the letters in order, making this a multi-sensory task. If a student needs to have scaffolds in place, only use those letters taught or sequence a smaller portion of the alphabet. 

2. What's the missing letter? 

Another way to work with sequencing skills and the alphabet arc is to identify the missing letter in the sequence. Students can place the letters of the alphabet in order using their alphabet arc and letters and then identify the missing letter in the alphabet sequence. This task pulls on students' memory for the sequence and written representations within our alphabet. 

There are several ways that I use the alphabet arc to reinforce the skill of sequence with the missing letter deck. 

1. Introduce the concept of the letter before and the letter after. Name a letter. Have students find that letter and tell you, "The letter before__ is __" or "The letter after ___ is ___". This provides students with oral language and sentence structure practice in addition to working on the concept of sequencing the alphabet.  
2. Pull the letter that completes the sequence. My student love to play this quick game of find the missing letter. Here they will look at the missing letter card and quickly locate and pull the letter that completes the sequence. We then state the complete sequence on the card, replace the missing letter, and move to the next missing sequence card. They love making this into a kind of game to see how quickly they can name and find the missing letter. 
3. Stamp the missing letter. My students love to use stamps and kinetic sand and the missing letter deck is a wonderful place to practice this skill. I have students place the stamps in an alphabet arc and then we stamp the missing letter as we say the complete sequence. You can also have students write the missing letter to complete a sequence - a great way to layer in extra handwriting practice! (stamps are from Melissa and Doug, kinetic sand and tray)

3. Link in handwriting 

I am a huge proponent of handwriting and proper letter formation, and the alphabet arcs provide a way to layer this work into our practice. My students love to write with dry erase markers right on their alphabet arcs! This is one way that I reinforce letter formation and handwriting work while also addressing letter sequence. We use our alphabet arcs to practice writing the letters. My early pre-kindergarten learners, who are ready to work on letter recognition and formation, love this!

Some tips and ways that you can scaffold or extend this instruction:

• only work on those letters which you have explicitly taught the correct letter formation.
• have the student say the letter name and sound (if taught) as they write the letter
• work on sequencing of the alphabet
• students can trace the letters on the chart - it's right there for them!
• you can add in small dots or stickers to help students identify the starting place for each letter when writing
• students can find the letters in their names and practice writing their names using proper letter formation

Helping our students, especially our dyslexic learners, build their letter knowledge and sequencing to automaticity is a skill that assists them in reading and spelling applications. This foundational of the alphabetic principle is necessary to teach, but, as you can see, doesn't need to be boring. We can make this learning multi-sensory and scaffold to meet the needs of our unique learners. 

Next week we will look at linking fluency, punctuation, and alphabetizing to our alphabet arc instruction. Let's keep the conversation going in the comment section. 

Alphabet arc resources can be found at:

Free downloads of alphabet arcs:

Alphabet Arc Download

Alphabet Arc Download 2

Alphabet Arc Download 3

Purchased alphabet arcs and letters (not affiliated - just some of my favorites)

https://www.alphabetletter.com/ This website has arcs and plastic letters in both English and Spanish and in upper-and-lower-case letters. Yes!

Have a great week!

Casey