For parents of all ages, alphabet posters would be one of our earliest interactions with letters, sounds and words.

“A is for… ” Do we even need to write “apple”? Isn’t it just drummed into us, to the point an apple has been one of the ABC Kids mascots since the ‘90s (although the C for carrot character was replaced with C for crocodile in 2020).

Be it in the bedroom, the playroom, even the bathroom, the walls of countless family homes – not to mention pre-schools, playgroups and kindergartens – have for decades had a poster consisting of 26 individual boxes, showing each letter of the alphabet and the picture of a word that starts with the corresponding letter.

It’s an easy win, right? A splash of colour and whimsy on a bare wall, with the added bonus of helping our youngsters become familiar with the alphabet. And we’ve done it for generations, so it’s surely a classic case of ‘if it ain’t broke…’, right?

Well, yes. But not all alphabet posters are created equal.

Sound Slam’s Alphabest Print posters are a little different to the usual “A is for apple” poster, which shows the letter next to a picture of its corresponding word.

Rather, a isn’t for apple, a is an apple.

It utilises embedded picture mnemonics.

Jargon alert: Mnemonic

A mnemonic is a device to help with memory. Perhaps you learnt one in primary school to, for example, familiarise yourself with the planets in the solar system: my very early mother just sits up near Pluto. Even the classic rhyme “I before E except after C” is a mnemonic.

On the Alphabest Print posters, all 26 letters of the alphabet have a key word embedded directly into the visualisation of the letter – b is a bubble, o is an octopus, r is a rainbow.

Using embedded picture mnemonics to help remember the letters of the alphabet is an old method – there’s a great example of an embedded picture mnemonic alphabet in the Queensland State Archives dating all the way back to 1948.

What difference does that make?

It’s a reasonable question – what difference is it going to make if the letter is next to a picture of a key word vs if the letter is a visual representation of the key word.

Research dating back more than 40 years shows that children “taught with integrated mnemonics learned more letter–sound associations and also more letter–picture

associations” than children who learnt using letters that did not have the letter-picture association - or children who learnt letters with no pictures (Ehri et al, 1984).

In the intervening decades, this research has been built upon, showing that embedded picture mnemonics are a more efficient means of teaching children their letter sounds – using them requires less repetition and helps to reduce confusion (Ehri, L. C., 2014).

So should I throw my old alphabet poster out?

No! When teaching your kids letter sounds, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

When it comes to learning the sounds, visualisation tools – whether they are embedded picture mnemonics or separated pictures and letters – increase letter and sound recognition (McNamara, G., 2012).

It may be the case that the letter A made of an apple is a better teaching tool than the letter A next to an apple, but both are better than just showing your child three joining lines and expecting them to easily remember that’s the symbol for A, which is the first sound in the word apple.

Something is better than nothing.

But if you’re looking to add a splash of colour to your bub’s bedroom walls that doubles as an early-learning tool, an alphabet poster made up of embedded picture mnemonics – like the Alphabest Print posters – is the best place to start.

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Ehri, L.C. (2014) Orthographic Mapping in the Acquisition of Sight Word Reading, Spelling Memory, and Vocabulary Learning, Scientific Studies of Reading, 18:1, 5-21, DOI: 10.1080/10888438.2013.819356

Ehri, L. C., Deffner, N. D., & Wilce, L. S. (1984). Pictorial mnemonics for phonics. Journal of Educational Psychology, 76(5), 880–893. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.76.5.880

McNamara, Gabrielle, "The effectiveness of embedded picture mnemonic alphabet cards on letter recognition and letter sound knowledge" (2012). Theses and Dissertations. 302. https://rdw.rowan.edu/etd/302