Recently, I taught a two week summer school the first two weeks of June. We had 4 groups of 6 that rotated between 4 teachers. The stations were phonics, comprehension, technology and guided reading at the students' levels. As I was working with a group of students at E/F level, I noticed that a couple of first grade students were confusing b and d. I made note on a post-it to pull these two and do some work on b/d. The whistle blew and a new group of students came to my group to read. This group was reading at g/h level. As I went around to each student, again I had students that were reading at this level confusing b/d. The third group came in reading at i/j level, and you guessed it! Even at that level, there were some students confusing b/d/q/p!!
We recently did a professional development with a book called, "Shifting the Balance," by Jan Miller Burkins and Kari Yates. I highly recommend this book! We learned the reason students confuse these letters. For example, if you have a chair you can tell a student it is a chair. If you turn it backwards, it is still a chair. If you turn it upside down, yep a chair. Backwards and upside down, the chair stays a chair. This is a concrete idea. Young students need concrete examples. So, when you tell them that a letter in a different position is a different letter, that is confusing for them.
I have never seen as many students struggle with this as I have this last year. I am not sure if it is because of a pandemic and students were not exposed to letters, words, and books as much as they have been in years past, but I suspect it played an important role in this scenario.
My plan this year is to take a little more time going through these letters with all my readers, high and low. I may even demonstrated the chair example for them. When I searched for resources, I struggled to find what I needed. Here is what I know...
1. Teach them to look at an alphabet. Say the alphabet. When rote quoting the abc's, they will come to the b first and compare it to their reading or writing. Then they will reach the d, and do the same.
2. Hold up 2 OK hand signs, close one eye and match it to the letters on the alphabet chart. Some people use closed fingers, with thumbs out to compare.
3. Have them say and write the letters b/d, copied from the alphabet chart to see it alone before starting to write in words or sentences.
4. I am working on a product this week that will give more practice in small groups. I will be posting soon, so watch for it on the home page of TPT if you are interested in small group work. I have already used it in summer school for my sweet littles that struggled. I plan to make a freebie to go along with this product. :)
Good luck with your b/d/p/q teaching this year! Let me know how it goes in my question and answer section. You may have ideas I haven't thought of. I need all the help I can get! We're all in this together.
Sincerely, Robin :)
Just by coloring these worksheets, your child will be exposed to the letters b and d and the way they are formed.
When you write the word bed, you can compare to the alphabet to see the way the b is written or the d is written.
More coloring b and d for exposure.
Show the hand strategy. When you start with the alphabet you 'see' the b or d in your hand.
You may want to show the face method, baseball and bat, or drum. Remember to pick one or two to work with. You don't want to throw all of these at once to your child or student.
These hand strategies are very common in the classroom setting.
Practice b and d with pictures of objects that start with these letters.
Once you have practiced with one of the above strategies, play games. Color the bs and color the ds.
b and d Bingo!! If you are homeschool or school setting, you may use anything to cover up the answers when called. Some ideas are pennies, small blocks, bears, cut out construction paper squares.
Play Bingo with words that start with b and d, if your child is at this stage. Seeing the letters in words and being able to differentiate them is an important skill in reading.
In this activity, you are looking only for words that start with b, and words that start with d, and coloring them.
You will be cutting out words and sorting them in b or d. Glue onto the the provided printable.
Color the b bubbles, color the d bubbles.
Practice writing b, practice writing d.
Sort pictures of words that start with b and d, perfect kindergarten or first grade students.
Here are a few colored examples of the pages above.
If you want to know more about this product, please visit the link.
I have FREE Practice pages if you are interested.
