Learning alphabetical order is an essential skill. You use this skill when looking up a word in the dictionary or finding a name in an alphabetized list. It is useful in many ways.

When you are beginning to learn how to alphabetize words you may want to refer to an alphabet on the wall or a printed alphabet on your desk.

First you look at the beginning letter of the word. "A" words come before "B" words etc. as in this example:

If you have a list of words and some of the words start with the same letter, you must look at the second letter. It may be helpful for you to put a slash mark (/) through the first letter and underline the second letter of each word to compare them. In this example the beginning letters are alike, but the second letter is different.

When words have the first two letters alike, you look at the third letter of each word. Put a slash mark through the first two letters and underline the third letter. Decide which of those letters is first in abc order.

If some of the words in your list have the first three letters alike, you can put a slash mark through the first three letters and underline the fourth letter to find the alphabetical order.

If a word has a suffix, the word by itself will come before the word with a suffix.

It may be helpful for the student to number the words as they would appear in alphabetical order
before writing them to avoid erasures.

You can practice alphabetizing words using the following worksheets