My kid knows the ABC song but they cannot read!
Updated: Oct 6
On a consultation call recently, a parent whose child attends an international preschool in Tokyo asked me:
"Kinota, my child knows the alphabet song by heart, but when I ask them to read a word like CAT, they can't read it. Are they falling behind? I'm very worried."
No, they are not falling behind.
Singing the alphabet song is a wonderful starting point for kids. It builds memory, introduces letter names, teaches the sequence of letters, and gets kids comfortable with letters and print.
Don't tell anyone... but even I used it to remember the order of the letters back when I was a librarian at the International School of the Sacred Heart.
But singing a song confidently and reading a word on a page are two completely different things.
A child can know all 26 letters and still not know how to read a word.
They may know that C is called “cee,” A is called “ay,” and T is called “tee.”
They may even be able to point to each letter when you ask them.
Actually reading the word CAT requires something different.
They need to learn what sounds those letters represent, understand how those sounds work together, and then blend them together to read the word.
C — /k/A — /ă/T — /t/
/k/ — /ă/ — /t/ → CAT
Knowing the alphabet song doesn't automatically teach a child how to connect letters and sounds or how to blend those sounds together to read a word.
So if your child can sing the song but isn't reading words yet, they aren't falling behind.
They've learned the alphabet song, which is a good achievement.
Now they need to start making the next connection: from knowing their letters to understanding the sounds those letters represent, and then using those sounds to read.
That's where actual reading instruction comes in.
If you're wondering how to take that next step with your child, contact me at Kinota Braithwaite - Learning & Assessment Specialist
More Than Just Tutoring Tokyo
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