The Alphabet Song Is Completely Different Now, a Teacher Breaks Down the Important Reason Why (Exclusive)

As the new alphabet song is going viral on TikTok, Rachel Platt tells PEOPLE why the changes are helping young learners

• Rachel Platt made a TikTok responding to recent conversations on X about changes to how kids sing the alphabet

• Platt, a first-grade teacher who specializes in structured literacy, explains how the slight changes to the ABCs make learning more accessible to kids who need more support, as well as English language learners

• Platt tells PEOPLE what it's like to be a voice for the new technique

Rachel Platt is teaching us about our ABCs.

The first-grade teacher — who specializes in structured literacy, literacy intervention and dyslexia, has Orton Gillingham training, and was named a Nessy Dyslexia International Science of Reading Teacher of the Year honorable mention in 2023 — recently went viral on TikTok sharing some insight on the new way of signing the alphabet song.

Platt, who is gearing up for her fifth year of teaching, tells PEOPLE that she gets to work with "a huge range of readers" through her job.

"My background is mostly in literacy and literacy intervention. I taught English to multilingual learners in Thailand," she says. "Today, I work with kids who are struggling readers. I also teach a general-led classroom every year, so I get a huge range of readers, which is really awesome. I'm able to work with them and differentiate instruction to provide the best literacy to each kid."

In her video, Platt explains, "Y'all, it's true. I'm a teacher and I don't teach the alphabet the way I grew up singing it and this is one of the reasons. Kids hear LMNOP and they don't say the individual letter names."

"Some even think this is one letter," she said, pointing to the group of letters.

"Another reason is because at the end of the traditional alphabet song, we sing 'Y and Z' and some kids that that 'whyan' is a letter or 'enzie' is a letter. So instead, we sing it 'ABCDEFG / HIJKLMN / OPQ/ RST/ UVW / XYZ /Now I never will forget / how to say the alphabet.'"

While the new way of singing the alphabet may surprise many, it's been commonplace in Platt's teaching experience.

"I have been teaching the ABCs this way my entire teaching career," Platt reveals. "Even in college, I started working with kids who were dyslexic or had different language or reading disabilities."

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Related: Principal's Son Accidentally Posts Video of Him on TikTok — and the Draft He Never Planned to Share Goes Viral (Exclusive)

For Platt, quizzing second and third-graders on their ABCs is a baseline part of her assessment.

"They'd sing the song to kind of get them started and they get to LMNOP and shut down a little bit. And so I definitely noticed this was a problem and I knew that this way of singing the alphabet song — with the pauses in the different places, but to the same tune — was really helpful for kids," she says.

"I would approach the kids I was working with and say, 'I noticed that you kind of are getting stuck there. Can I teach you a different way to sing the song?' All the kids that I worked with were super receptive to that. Even kids in my classroom who don't necessarily need the extra support say they understand why we sing it like that. They know someone who'd been confused by it before. The kids are really flexible and receptive to it."

While so many reacting to the song online were surprised by the changes, Platt says the parents she encounters are pretty easygoing about it, even if they are different from the phonics rules they grew up with.

"A lot of phonics instructions in the United States [are] really cursory," Platt notes. "All of the teaching that I do follows this approach called structured literacy, which is based on research about how reading is learned in the brain. All of the phonics I teach, starting with the alphabet song, is very explicit. We're teaching one sound and the spelling at a time. It feels really slow to start out with, but then the kids just take off because they know all of these phonics rules and are reading really advanced stuff by the end of first grade, in my case."

Speech-language pathologist Amy Zembriski, owner of Speech Therapy Connections, was unfamiliar with the changes to the alphabet song but admits they do make sense for little learners.

“I was in shock when I saw this new TikTok trend with a change in the alphabet song most of us have come to know and love! I’ll be honest, I was sad, BUT when I really thought about it… I think the recent update to the traditional alphabet song is going to positively impact children's speech and language development," Zembriski tells PEOPLE.

"By slowing down the "L-M-N-O-P" part of the song, each letter is pronounced more clearly, making it easier for kids to hear and understand individual sounds," Zembriski adds. "This improvement is especially important because it boosts phonological awareness — the ability to recognize and work with the sounds that make up words — which is a very important skill for learning to read and spell. For kids with phonological disorders, who often struggle with sound discrimination (the ability to hear & recognize differences in sounds) and articulation, this new version of the alphabet song can be particularly helpful. It gives them a clearer model of how each letter sounds, making it easier to correct sound errors and reach important speech milestones."

Zambriski also says that the renewed focus on phonics rules can help children with "their difficulty in self-monitoring and identifying the sounds they produce incorrectly," a challenge many speech therapists work with their patients on.

"An improvement in phonological awareness can help a child develop awareness much more easily and have a positive impact on how they progress in therapy," Zembriski says. "It’s also important to know that many children with phonological disorders are at a higher risk of having reading challenges, too."

She continues, "Since strong phonological awareness is key to decoding words, this clearer version of the song can support better reading development as well. Speech therapists can create more focused activities that support both speech and reading skills at the same time by incorporating this new version of the alphabet into therapy sessions!”

Platt wasn't expecting her comments and explanations on the new ABCs to go viral.

"I've been sharing early literacy tips online for like five years now, but I'm always surprised whenever a video takes off. All of my content is fairly academic, so I always find it funny when people are reactive to what I share," she says.

"A lot of the comments were like, 'Oh, I get why this has changed, but thanks now my millennial brain hurts,'" she says. "Most people realize why the change makes sense. Some say, 'I was an LMNOP kid and mixed up those letters.' But it definitely is a hard shift for their brains to make as like fluently literate adults, and from your experience with interacting with others.

"I hope that it's becoming more predominant," she adds. "The approach that I mentioned before structured literacy is getting more traction. The research in and of itself about reading and the brain is fairly academic, but myself, along with some other creators and educators that I've met online in the past couple of years, have been working really hard to spread the message of structured literacy and equity in literacy. So I'm seeing more and more things that we're talking about getting picked up and even curriculums starting to make changes, which is really awesome.

The educator is looking forward to kicking off another school year where she guides first graders on a journey of growth.

"The difference between a kindergartner and a second grader is massive and that's like thanks to all the work. We do not just in literacy and math but also in terms of like executive functioning skills in first grade," she says. "So, at the beginning of the year, in first grade, I really feel like we're holding their hands through every single little step of what they're doing in terms of their organization and in terms of their strategic approach to work."

She continues, "And at the end of the year, they're just so independent and they're really little functioning humans that have so many skills and are ready to soar in terms of academics, but also in terms of like organizing their life and feeling like they're on top of things and know their schedule," she shares.

"It's really, really cool to see that growth and I always have a huge awakening going back to the beginning of the school year of these little babies that come to me. And I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, you guys are gonna learn so much and grow so much this year.'"

For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!

Read the original article on People.