Alphabetical Menu

[eluser]kashi[/eluser]
Hi everyone.
im new with CI and im having a problem: i want to create an alphabetical menu, you know,

Code:

a-b-c-d-e-f-g-h-i-j-k-l-m-n-o-p-q-r-s-t-u-v-w-x-y-z

and what i want (as you imagine) is that when you click on the "A" you get the results of all the objects starting with the letter A. in mysql is something like this

Code:

SELECT *
FROM  `items`
WHERE name LIKE  'a%'
ORDER BY  `items`.`name` ASC
LIMIT 0 , 30

but i dont know how to adapt it to CI.

Hope you can help me!

PS: sorry for my english, is not my native language.