According to a new study from the University of Missouri College of Education, children who attend preschool become much better at alphabet letter recognition. For many years, education experts have been telling us that preschool years are important to a child’s development and school preparation. After only a year of preschool, children’s alphabet recognition abilities improved by more than 85 percent, in comparison with their peers who had just started the same program.
“Alphabet recognition has been shown to be one of the strongest and most reliable predictors of reading ability and, on its own, letter name knowledge can be as effective as administering an entire reading readiness test. On average, the more letters children can recognize and identify at an early age, the better their future reading achievement and the lower the risk of academic failure,” said Francis Huang, an assistant professor of psychology at Missouri University.
Picture: The First Lesson, by Carlton Alfred Smith (Wikimedia Commons, w/Effects)
