Timing How Fast A Student Can Write The Letters Of The Alphabet!  Is That Important?

I recently stumbled across an interesting article that I think you might enjoy as well.

A research study from the University of Washington found that children who could recall and print letters of the alphabet (upper and lowercase-two separate tests) at 40 letters per minute, were all very successful with 1st grade reading and writing tasks. "...In fact, there were virtually no reading failures among such children."

I’m all for looking into something that will help students become better readers and writers. If challenging students to “Beat the clock!” and simply taking 60 seconds out of the day will encourage that, well I think it would be worth giving it a try.

It certainly has worked with math when we did “Mad-Minute Math” My students LOVED those timed tests no matter what grade I taught.

I think having fun timed activities prepares students for later timed tests and relieves anxiety in upper elementary grades, because they were introduced to these types of things early on, in a relaxed, game-like fashion.

The article states that students do enjoy these timed activities and specifically states not to give them to students who are not proficient, so as not to frustrate strugglers.

I designed an ABC Fluency packet that includes:

• The informative article with website link
• An ABC Fluency Timed Test Assessment Recording sheet +
• An ABC Fluency Timed Test sheet for students

Thanks for visiting today.  Feel free to PIN anything you think others might find helpful.

Do you have a favorite ABC teaching tip you could share? I'd enjoy hearing from you! diane@teachwithme.com or post a comment here.  Just think if everyone took a moment to share something, our bag of tricks would be overflowing! Thanks in advance.

"More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of." -Alfred, Lord Tennyson