David practices his name, a, b, c, and then adds d.  A vertical surface (the easel) facilitates handwriting.  Soon he practices meaningful sentences: “I love you.”

You probably already know which children need more time and more carefully scaffolded writing instruction to be successful and perceive ABC fluency practice (“brain exercise”) as an enjoyable challenge.

I recommend giving less-experienced children additional guided writing practice individually or in a small groups,building fluency with their name and meaningful words and phrases.  Then encourage them to mentally retrieve and write a,b,c, then abcd, and efg over and over in a very non-threatening environment on their name ticket or journals.  Keep verbalizing another phrase of the traditional ABC chant so the children have the internal auditory support. Provide guided imagery rehearsals and teach them to sub-vocalize abcd, efg…as they write. 

Train parents and volunteers to work one-on-one with less-experienced students: write the letters in the air, on salt trays, on etch-a-sketch boards, at the easel, and on the chalkboard.  The key is repetition until each child has quick, confident recall and efficient handwriting for a growing number of letters. This type of fluency rehearsal may be a more efficient use of time than merely asking children to copy one letter over and over for handwriting practice.  Copying from a model does not require a child to develop quick letter recall.  Perhaps ABC fluency practice even deserves a brief segment of writing workshop time.  Once children truly have fluency with most letters and some key high-frequency words and phrases, they can more easily focus on recording their ideas fluently in daily kid writing.

Why is this important?
“The point is the practice in retrieving the picture of the letter from their brain. You are exercising the brain and setting in stone the path for retrieving words from their brain. When we read, we are retrieving the pictures of words from our brains. And for comprehension to occur, that retrieval has to be fast, or at the rate one speaks. It holds the same principle, it’s just that you are practicing the retrieval process to ready the kid’s brains for fluent reading.”
        Quote from ‘Pickles’ on the mentor kindergarten teachers chatboard

Fluency = speed + accuracy

How do you use high-frequency words to build ABC fluency?