Which alphabet do you think would be most effective in teaching the letters to children? Why? What alphabets do you think are least helpful? Why? Why is Dr. Seuss so popular with early readers?

Check out this website: http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/nep/

Read these articles from the New England Primer: “Alphabet Poem” and “An Alphabet Lessons for Children”

What is the point of this text? Why would this piece of children’s literature be popular or unpopular with today’s children?  

It seems that most children at the age of learning letters and words are visual learners, hence the reason for activities such as arts and crafts, show and tell, and physical, hands on demonstrations by teachers. Therefore, I think the picture alphabet would be most effective in teaching letters to children, especially when the pictures relate to what the letters are; for example a picture of an apple for the letter A, a ball for the letter B, and so on. When children are young and first starting to learn their letters, they probably aren’t at their best with communicating with language and speech, because they are still learning the correct way to speak. So children need to see things with their eyes and relate that by touching and then knowing what it is in their heads. They also need to be able to show others things to help them communicate what they want and what they are talking about. They don’t know a lot of words and the more pictures they have to go with each word the more effectively they will understand the meaning of each the words. 

I think the alphabet which is least effective would be the instructive alphabet because there are too many words and ideas at one time for a child to grasp. I think it’s harder to relate to letter A with a word like “at” or “and” to help teach a child the letter A. Or another example from the text is the letter S for the word “some” or W for the word “where.” I don’t agree that these are good beginning words to teach and that relate to a child.  

Dr. Seuss is so popular with early readers because it is so fun and colorful. The rhymes are catchy and when read out loud it has a sing-song way about it. The pictures go with the words and are very vibrant and silly. Kids like silly stuff. 

It seems like the passage from “The New-England Primer” was first and foremost really about creating a sense of fear in children regarding religion and God. They did this in the schools and tried to weave it into what the children were learning, which was the alphabet and using rhyme to help teach these words. This type of children’s literature would not be popular today. In fact, this kind of piece probably wouldn’t even be allowed in the school system. Teachers are to be encouraging and uplifting, not try to teach harsh moral lessons and put fear in the minds of these children!