Here’s an exercise I like to do with my students that helps to
1) reinforce letter recognition and naming
2) drill articulating letters in the order they appear (sequencing)
3) work on tracking and the ability to look ahead while keeping their place (like when they need to look ahead to the end of a word to check for silent-e before sounding out the vowel)
4) practice grouping or chunking to support better fluency.
And because all of this is done at the letter, not the word, level, it removes a level of complexity so the student can focus on practicing the underlying basic skills.
For this exercise, you will need a tray of magnetic letters. I just use one of each letter of the alphabet, and put them in a couple of rows in non-alphabetical order.
lay out magnetic letters on a tray
First, have the student point to each letter and give the letter name. This is just a warm-up, and to make sure they can correctly name all the letters. Then the real exercise begins.
Rapid Letter Naming by Threes
1) have the student point to the first letter, and without moving their finger, name that letter and the next two letters. They should name the letters in rhythm as a grouping of 3, not as three separate letters (“g-r-i” not “g. r. i.”) Note that they are giving the letter names, not the sounds.
student names first three letters without moving his finger
2) the student then moves their finger over one letter, and repeats step (1) for the next letters (“r-I-p”), again naming three letters at a time before moving their finger.
student moves over one letter and repeats
3) continue working their way through naming the entire tray of letters, three at a time.
continue naming letters by groups of 3
4) When you get to the end of a row, “wrap around” and continue with the letter on the next row (so in this example, it would be “o-c-k”, “c-k-m”, “k-m-a”, etc.) This is good practice to help students move from line to line like they will have to do when reading text.
Hopefully the student will increase the speed with which they can get name the letters, so with enough practice, this drill doesn’t take long to get through.