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My 5 1/2 is not able to recall his letters

My boy will be 6 in March and is in kindergarten. He has attended a year of pre-school already. We just had our parent teacher conference and the teacher pointed out that he is not retaining the letter of the week. He is submerged in one particular letter all week through different forms of learning. If you lay out 5 letters and ask him to point to the G, he can but if I point to a letter and say what is it he just shruggs his shoulders. Most of the time he can even tell me the sound that the letter makes or a word that starts with that letter, like Gorilla but, he can not tell me what the letter is. The teacher is concerned as the other children are getting it. He is showing some minor behavior issues and the teacher thinks it stems from frustration.  Does anyone know what this might be?
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189897 tn?1441126518
COMMUNITY LEADER
   Good ideas by Rockrose.
   I wonder if any of this is anxiety related?  If so practice at home might help that.   Also if he can say the sound of the letter, he is very close to saying the letter.  And the sound is much more important.
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13167 tn?1327194124
oops,  "see how many seconds it takes him to name most of the 5 letters".  
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13167 tn?1327194124
People's brains can have amazing deficits and positives.    Kids with different deficits tend to be able to compensate somehow.

I think if I were you I'd get letter flashcards,  and go at it as a game.  All he has to do is name the letters,  he doesn't have to do sounds or words that start with or anything.  Make a game of it,  and make it short.  Like,  3 minutes.

Maybe go over 5 letters for a couple minutes.  This is M,  this is E,  etc.  Then lay out the letters,  start the egg timer,  and see how many seconds it takes him to lay out letters.  

I don't know why he's not encoding the names of the letters.    He can clearly recognize them.  Does he have any other trouble with nouns - coming up with names of animals,  names of people,  etc?  If you pointed to a variety of animals and asked "what is this?" can he do it?  

I ask because nouns are stored in a separate place in the brain from other words,  and nouns are particularly troublesome to remember.  That's why in the beginnings of normal aging,  people first lose the ability to recall nouns.  
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