Frequently Asked Questions

When children can identify beginning sounds they begin to understand that words are made up of individuals sounds put together. This skill is called phonemic awareness, and it builds the foundation for learning to read.

When you see letters or groups of letters between slashes, they represent sounds, not letter names. For example, /b/ is the sound the letter b makes, and /ks/ is the sound made by the letter x in words like box. Your child should say the sound, not the letter name. For example: * /b/ → “buh” (the sound in bat) * /m/ → “mmm” (the sound in moon) * /ă/ → the short a sound in apple * /ā/ → the long a sound in ape * /ks/ → the sound at the end of box Learning sounds first helps children blend sounds together to read words more easily.

Although the lowercase e has a curved shape, it begins with a straight line, not a circle. In the Line and Clock Method, letters are grouped by how they start, not by how they end. When writing e, children first make a short horizontal line. That line leads directly into the curve that completes the letter. Because the first stroke is a line, e is taught as a Line Letter. Grouping letters by their starting stroke helps children remember how to form each letter correctly and builds consistent handwriting habits.

In the Alphabet Guy books, we teach handwriting using a line and clock method. This approach gives children a clear, consistent way to form letters correctly from the very beginning. The Line Some letters begin with a straight line. The line can be straight up and down (as in l), to the side (as in e), or at an angle (as in w). The Clock For curved letters, children are taught to start at a specific “time” on an imaginary clock, such as 2 o’clock, and move in a consistent direction. This helps children internalize where letters begin and how they flow. Teaching children to recognize which stroke comes first helps prevent guessing and builds strong muscle memory. It can also help prevent letter reversals. Together, these methods give children a clear plan for writing instead of asking them to copy shapes without understanding how letters are formed.

Writing is not just about making letters look neat. When children write by hand, they are building the brain connections that support reading, spelling, and sound recognition. Handwriting strengthens how the brain links sounds to symbols and symbols to meaning. In other words, writing helps reading happen. So if you are teaching a child to read, handwriting is not an “extra.” It is a core part of literacy development. Several well-known researchers have studied how handwriting supports reading development. Virginia Berninger and her colleagues found that handwriting supports letter recognition, spelling, and reading fluency. Writing letters and words activates language processing in ways that typing does not. When children write, they engage the brain systems that help them remember how letters work within words and patterns. Karin James studied how the brain responds when young children write letters by hand. Her research showed that writing letters activates areas of the brain connected to reading and language much more strongly than tracing or typing. Writing by hand helps the brain form stronger mental representations of letters. Steve Graham and others have also found that explicit instruction in writing and spelling supports reading development. Learning to write letters and words improves how children recognize and process written language. In short, handwriting is not just a motor skill. It directly supports literacy

Because dge is a phonogram. Instead of recognizing the e as a separate letter, we recognize d, g, and e together as one phonogram that represents a single sound. The e is part of the phonogram, so we don’t identify it as a silent e.

The silent e doesn’t have a dot because it isn’t read aloud. In this program, only the letters that are pronounced are tapped. Since the silent e has no sound, it isn’t tapped, so it doesn’t receive a dot. Even though it stays in the word, its job is to change the sound of another letter, not to make a sound itself.

A magic e is a silent e at the end of a word that makes the preceding vowel say its name, or produce its long vowel sound, as in cake or bike. A silent e, on the other hand, is simply an e that is not pronounced. It does not always change the preceding vowel to a long vowel sound, as in urge or handle.