RARE/HTF " THE LETTER PEOPLE " Complete Vinyl Record Set. Never Played
Item History & Price
This is a 14 piece 7 inch vinyl record set, 33 1/3 rpm of "The Letter People" on the New Dimensions Inc. Education Records label. Open Box - Records are in absolute perfect condition .. they have NEVER BEEN PLAYED & only removed from sleeves in order to take these pics. This set has been sitting on shelf in closet, plain white box (my written description on bottom) & in my opinion just going to waste. Each record individually sleeved with picture of original letter ch...aracter attached to that letter.NOTE: YOU'LL FIND COMPLETE HISTORY & SPECIFIC DETAILS ON
https://www.retrojunk.com/article/show/1448/the-letter-peopleThe Letter People is a children's literacy program and the television series based on said program. The term also refers to the various characters depicted in the program and television show.
Each letter of the English alphabet is represented by a unique character with traits derived from its letter. The consonants are male, and the vowels are female
Elayne Reiss-Weimann and Rita Friedman originally created the concept of Letter People as teachers in Nanuet, New York. In 1964, the idea for the Letter People came to first-grade teacher Elayne Reiss-Weimann, who had struggled daily to draw attention of her 24 students (who were typical first graders, eager and rambunctious) in a distraction-fond hallway classroom at an overcrowded school based in Nanuet, New York. Weimann managed to collaborate with an early childhood coordinator, Rita Friedman, to create an educational program that revolved around 26 anthropomorphic characters-- each who represented the letters of the alphabet-- to teach beginning readers how to "decode" or "sound out" the consonants and vowels that form words. They embodied the basic rules of phonics into stories about these make-believe characters called Letter People. Each 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. For example, Mr. M has a Munching Mouth, Mr. N has a Noisy Nose, or Mr. T has Tall Teeth. The characters were painted on large, two-dimensional portrait cards. Each character was given an engaging personality to help the teacher bring her or him alive in the classroom, and each character had a song (or a poem at the time) to help children recall the distinguishing feature and sound. With the help of the Letter People, children remained on-task, learned more quickly and retained what they learned. From the beginning, the children viewed the Letter People as real people and not just letters of the alphabet, phonics devices, or toys. On one occasion, when the Letter People had to be shipped to another school, the children insisted that holes be placed in the boxes so that the Letter People could breathe as they traveled.
Weimann and Friedman later sold the idea to New Dimensions in Education, Inc. (based in Plainview, New York and later in Norwalk, Connecticut) which, in turn, copyrighted and published The Letter People educational products in 1968. NDE hired Elizabeth Callen to design the look of the characters in the classroom programs. NDE developed the concept into classroom programs: Alpha One in 1968, and Alpha Time in 1974. In Alpha Time, the two-dimensional portrait card characters were made into three-dimensional, inflatable, child-sized vinyl characters commonly known as "The Huggables" (see Life Magazine, May 12, 1972), which were large enough for small children to hug (though there were smaller-sized Huggables as well). Eventually, Alan J. Pratt, Ph.D., a director and vice-president of NDE, Inc. approached KETC-TV, a PBS affiliate in St. Louis, MO about creating a TV series based on the escapades of the Letter People. After five pilot programs were produced, Dr. Pratt approached the Council of Great City Schools (the 20 largest school districts in the Country.) Eventually, with the cooperation of the superintendents of the Council, NDE, Inc. and KETC-TV a joint venture commenced. The series comprised 60, 15-minute episodes that became extremely popular with children nationwide who were learning to read. To insure phonetic and linguistic accuracy in the television production process, Ruth Lerner from NDE served as the Editorial Supervisor. Alan Pratt, Ph.D. was the Curriculum Consultant for the TV series. Tom McDonough of KETC-TV was writer-director of the television series.
The program's basic concept was simple: Each letter of the English alphabet was represented by a unique character with traits derived from itself. The consonants were males (as "the Letter Boys"), and the vowels were females (as "the Letter Girls", whom there could be no word without). Reiss-Weimann, Friedman and Callen also wrote two series of books about the characters, Fables from the Letter Peopleand Read-to-Me. Each Letter Person also had an accompanying song (available on 8-track cartridge and vinyl record), and inflatable vinyl effigies in two sizes (12-14 inches or 30-inch "life-size") known as a "Huggables". Other merchandise included filmstrips and flash cards. Educators who adopted the program were trained in its implementation, and The Letter Peoplewas soon picked up by hundreds of schools across the United States.
While Abrams and Co. Publishers, Inc. revamped the Letter People program in 1996, the original 1968 program still has thousands of adult fans who remember learning how much fun it was learning to read with the help of The Letter People !!
