February 10, 2026
“Blue starts with the letter F”: The Power of Orthographic Intervention
This week I was sitting, playing with my pom pom poppers with one of my preschool aged friends. We were discussing the different colored pom poms when it came to the color blue. He said, “It’s flue.” “Flue?” I asked. “What letter does blue start with?” He replied with confidence, “F,” and then made the corresponding sound. I brought out one of my dry erase note cards (a great idea from my orthographic intervention training!), wrote “blue” and said, “Blue starts with the letter b.” He looked at the card and said, “Blue.” There was power in connecting his letter/sound correspondence with the written letter.
I then drove to see one of my five year old friends who has a history of a severe speech sound disorder characterized by missing sounds. In contrast to my preschool friend, he is working on making connections between sounds and letters. When I asked him if he would like to write his name on one of my note cards, he said, “Yes.” His first name has three letters. I asked him “What is the first letter in your name?” He replied, “E” which happens to be the middle letter in his name. He wanted to write his last name and, when he wrote it, it was missing the medial consonant which was the first omission pattern we targeted in therapy when he was three.
This further supports the importance of including the written word in my sessions to especially help the little ones with missing sounds who are at highest risk for literacy challenges later on.