One of the “visual cues” you may see on your child’s desk to remind them of the speech-to-print connection.
Many parents know that letter learning is one of the first tasks a student must take on when learning to read. They must be able to recognize a letter and produce the sound it spells. With that goal in mind, many people start teaching their child to recognize letters by name, then teach them the sound it “makes”.
“Here is the letter S. S makes the sound /s/.”
But, what if we teach it “backwards”? What if we teach them to recognize the /s/ sound in the words they say, then show them the letter that “spells” that sound? This theory of foundational literacy skill instruction is called “Speech-to-Print”. It means you start with spoken language, something children typically develop naturally, and help the child notice the small sounds in their language before showing them the written representation, or spelling, of each sound and the rules that accompany them.
This approach can help students with a persistently pesky problem: lowercase b/d confusions. Since the written English language always moves left-to-right, just attach the shape of the mouth to the first shape your eye “hits” when reading the letter. If your eye “hits” the line first, press your lips together to make a line... which is the first thing your mouth does to create the /b/ sound. If your eye passes the “circle part” first, your lips should part the way they do when making the /d/ sound. Likewise, during writing, “if your mouth makes a line first”, like in the /b/ sound, "your hand should make the line first” when forming the letter. (Starting at the top, of course!)
If your child struggles with b/d confusions, give this strategy a try!