![]() ![]() The characters were painted on large, two-dimensional portrait cards. For example, Mister M has a munching mouth, Mister N has a noisy nose and Mister T has tall teeth. ![]() They embodied the basic rules of phonics into stories about this clan of make-believe pictograms called the Letter People.Įach letter of the alphabet had a distinct characteristic to help children learn not only the letter but the sound the letter represents in the written word. Weimann collaborated with an early childhood coordinator, Rita Friedman, to create an educational program that revolved around 26 anthropomorphic characters, each representing a letter of the alphabet, to teach beginning readers how to "decode" or "sound out" the consonants and vowels that form words. She had struggled daily to draw the attention of her 24 students (who were typical first-graders, eager and rambunctious) in a distraction-fond hallway classroom at the overcrowded school. ![]() In 1964, first-grade teacher Reiss-Weimann formed the original idea for the Letter People. ![]() Card used in a public school classroom from the Alpha One Pre-Reading Kit that shows the 1968 version of Mister T from The Letter PeopleĮlayne Reiss-Weimann and Rita Friedman created the concept of Letter People as teachers in Nanuet, New York. ![]()
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