Reexamines what learning the alphabet means from the child's perspective. Draws from several case studies and other naturalistic examinations of young children as they learn to read and write to describe what young children learn about the alphabet. (MG)

A case study involved the adaptation of Reading Recovery technique in an attempt to improve the alphabet knowledge of a kindergarten student. Over a 2-week period, recovery techniques were employed in one-on-one sessions, the goal of which was to increase the student's ability to recognize and produce five letters of the alphabet. Assessments…

Reading can be defined as a meaningful interaction with a print setting. Interactive models of reading assume that lower level and higher level processing occurs simultaneously, interacting with each other. The familiarity of the book, the context in which a sign occurs, and the illustrations of a book are all examples of print setting cues that…