It is well established in the research that letter naming is highly correlated with foundational skills readiness, therefore students need to know 21 letter names before they begin small-group reading in the Being a Reader program. We know that students who know 21 letter names are better equipped to engage in the foundational skills work as it gets increasingly complex.
The high-frequency words in the Being a Reader program are taught using the “read-spell-read” routine. Students have to know the letter names in order to engage in the high-frequency word routine.