If You’re Not Teaching These Two Skills in Preschool, You’re Failing Future Readers
- Melissa McCall
- Sep 15
- 7 min read
The Day When I Realized I Had Been Doing It All Wrong...
I’ll never forget the day I realized I had been teaching children to read the wrong way. That moment when the facts about how children actually learn to read collided with years of doing it differently… it stung...BIGTIME! My heart broke for my students, but the deepest ache was knowing I had failed my own daughter.
My daughter was the classic child who slipped through the cracks. She was bright, social, a natural leader...yet she simply struggled to read. She was clever enough to mask her struggles on tests, but no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong. I had taught kindergarten for years, I held a master’s degree in special education, and still, I couldn’t identify the root of her struggle.
In the years that followed, I found myself pouring over her test scores, advocating at her school, and ultimately seeking private testing...something that so many families do not have the means to do. That reality still weighs heavy on me, because a child’s access to support should never come down to privilege or resources.
It was through this journey and as I began learning more about the science of reading in my role as an MTSS coordinator (and the podcast, Sold a Story), that I finally uncovered the truth. I had never been taught about the science of reading, specifically the importance of phonological awareness and how critical it is to reading success. The realization hit hard: I had been trained to teach reading in a way that left out one of the most essential building blocks.
That discovery set me on a path of deep reflection and research. I began asking hard questions: When do these skills develop? Are preschool teachers equipped to teach them? What can we do at the preschool level to prevent these struggles before they begin? Because the truth is, my daughter had been showing signs for years, and my lack of knowledge kept me from recognizing them.
And that’s why I’m here today, to share what I’ve learned. If we want preschoolers to truly be prepared for reading, we must teach both alphabet knowledge and phonological awareness. These skills matter deeply. I believe with every ounce of my being that if preschool teachers are better equipped with this knowledge, and given playful, engaging ways to teach it, we can change the trajectory of literacy in America. An America where currently, nearly 70% of fourth graders are not proficient in reading.
So let’s dive into the how and why of this crucial work.
What is Really Happening in the Reading Brain?
When children learn to read, different parts of the brain must learn to work together.
The speech and sound system supports phonological awareness, the ability to hear, pronounce, and manipulate sounds in words. This involves the inferior frontal area (blue) for phoneme pronunciation/articulation and the parietal-temporal area (pink) for phoneme analysis and sound-symbol mapping.
The visual recognition system supports alphabet knowledge, recognizing letters, recalling their names, and connecting them to sounds. This involves the temporal-occipital area (purple).
Finally, the temporal lobe (green) supports language comprehension, helping children make meaning from words once they are decoded.
On their own, these systems are powerful. But unless we help children connect the sounds of speech to the symbols of print, reading cannot take root. The brain was not naturally wired for reading. Unlike this common misconception, science has proven that reading must be explicitly taught to form these connections. Moreover, we have to make specific connections between these regions of the brain to build a reader.
Where Do We Begin in Preschool: Sounds or Symbols?
The brain is wired for language long before it is ready for print. From birth, children are immersed in spoken words, songs, and conversations. This is where phonological awareness begins, in the natural, playful ways young children explore and imitate sounds. Babies babble, toddlers sing nursery rhymes, and preschoolers love silly songs and sound games.
But while children naturally play with sounds, we know from the Science of Reading that they must go deeper. To become successful readers, children need explicit practice in hearing, blending, segmenting, and manipulating at the phoneme level (the smallest unit of sound in a word). Children must be able to hear each sound in a word, such as /c/ /a/ /t/.
If we rush ahead to the sound–symbol connection before children can truly hear the sounds in words, we risk skipping a critical step, or worse (like in the case of my own daughter), overlook where extra support is needed. Letters alone are just shapes. It’s the ability to map sounds into those shapes that transforms them into tools for reading.
So, Should We Teach These Skills Separately or Together?
Although sound skills naturally develop from birth does not mean that we hold off on teaching letters. Children should have frequent opportunities to hear and play with sounds while also learning to connect those sounds to print in meaningful, playful ways.
The most common questions I get asked:
Should we first teach letters and later add sounds?
Should we only focus on sounds before bringing in print?
The answer is both, together. Alphabet knowledge and phonological awareness belong on parallel tracks, developing alongside one another and supporting each other along the way.
Phonological awareness alone lets children play with sounds but doesn’t show them how print works.
Alphabet knowledge alone helps children name letters but doesn’t give them the sound system to decode.
Together, they provide the foundation for fluent reading.
But how to do both? Let’s explore this further!
Building on Parallel Tracks
Children’s brains are wired for language long before print, but as children’s alphabetic knowledge grows, we can begin to connect these large parts of language to the printed symbols. For example, once children know the letter M, they can connect the /m/ sound they’ve heard in familiar words like mommy or milk to the printed letter on a card or in a storybook. This is where the bridge from spoken to written language begins to form.
For example:
As children sing a rhyming song, we can highlight the printed rhyming words on the page (cat / hat / bat).
As children notice that two words start the same (ball and baby), we can point to the printed B and connect it to the /b/ sound.
As children stretch out the sounds in a familiar word (sun → /s/ /u/ /n/), we can build the word together with letter cards.
These little moments add up, giving children multiple pathways to connect sound and symbol.
While we are constantly making connections between the two skills naturally in the classroom, we can’t neglect that these skills DO need to be taught explicitly. In fact, research shows that phonemic awareness instruction is twice as effective when letter symbols are added…not instead of oral practice, but along with it (FutureEd, 2024).
In our curriculum, we like to begin with a quick print-free sound warm up. Once children’s sound systems are engaged, we introduce letters and reinforce that connection through our Moving Little Minds Flashcards, which always link sound + symbol together. This helps children map what they hear to what they see...and move to the sound along the way!
Still, it’s important to remember that being able to say the name and sound of a letter does not automatically mean a child can blend sounds into words or segment words into sounds. Those are higher-level skills that require phonemic awareness practice. Let’s explore one way we do this in the classroom.
Why I Love Sound Boxes
One of my favorite tools for making this connection explicit is sound boxes (Elkonin boxes). We begin using this tool in the 4s classroom around December or January. Here is how they work:
Each box represents one sound.
We slowly separate sounds as we slide our hand down our arms.
Next, children push a block into each box as they say the sounds in a word.
Once we have a solid foundation in this practice (1 month, or so), and strong alphabetic knowledge, we write letters into the boxes to match the sounds.
Finally, we then run our fingers under the sounds as we blend the sounds aloud, saying the entire word fast to read it together.
Watch this in action below, and grab your sound boxes HERE:
Sound boxes make the invisible (spoken sounds) visible, giving children a concrete way to connect the two systems of the brain.
Bringing It All Together...
Alphabet knowledge and phonological awareness are not competing skills, but partners. These are the skills we must prioritize in preschool, taught intentionally and explicitly connected. Children need to both hear the sounds in words and see how those sounds link to print. That’s the bridge to becoming readers…a bridge that we can create at the preschool level and I believe can literally change the future of our children in America.
Preschool teachers, I encourage you to reflect on how you’re weaving sound awareness into your daily routines alongside letter instruction. Are you simply singing songs and rhyming? If so, you are not doing enough. Phonological awareness skills are not optional; they are essential. When we overlook them, we risk leaving children without the foundation they need. But when we commit to them, we give every child the opportunity to thrive as a reader.
If you’re ready to go deeper and strengthen your practice, I invite you to explore our Moving Little Minds Course Bundle. This bundle is designed to equip you with practical, research-based tools and playful strategies that make it easier to weave sound awareness and letter instruction together, so you can confidently build strong foundations for every child in your classroom.
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References:
National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Ehri, L. C., Nunes, S. R., Willows, D. M., Schuster, B. V., Yaghoub-Zadeh, Z., & Shanahan, T. (2001). Phonemic awareness instruction helps children learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel’s meta-analysis. Reading Research Quarterly, 36(3), 250–287.
Heggerty. (n.d.). Phonemic Awareness: In the Dark or With Print? Webinar & guidance resource
The Reading League (Brady, S. A.). (2020). Expanded Version of Alphabetics: Phoneme Awareness, Phonics, and Word Study. The Reading League Journal. PDF
FutureEd. (2024). New Reading Research Shows the Power of Connecting Letters and Sounds. Link
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