Amazing Alphabet Ideas

Each day, I meet with a small group of students and we work on reviewing letters and letter sounds. We practice in several ways, so that I meet the needs of all my learners. First, we chant the alphabet, saying the letter, the letter sound and then a word that starts with that letter. Next, we practice writing the letters. We do this first by tracing the letters so that we can feel how the letter is made. When we trace the letters, we use the Sensory Letters. I love that the black line is soft to the touch and helps my students physically remember how to write and form each letter. Next, we move on to tracing the letters using the Giant Dry Erase Traceable Letters. Each of these letters is coded with the stroke order that matches what we practiced before with the Sensory Letters. My students take a letter, say its name, and then trace the letter. Both of these activities help us retain letter formation, the letter name and sound. We spend about 5 minutes on these two activities daily, until we have mastered them. After we have mastered forming and naming the letters, we move on to putting our learning to use. We use the Phonics Readers to help build our knowledge of the letter sounds; how each letter can sound when it is pronounced in different words. We trace the large letters in the Phonics Reader books and point to each of the pictures and "read" the words under them. While my small groups are meeting with me, my other students are working at literacy stations, continuing to work on their alphabet knowledge. One way we practice letter identification is to make a quick game of memory. I used the Mega Alphabet Sticker Assortment and stuck two of the same letter stickers on each side of an index card. I then cut each index card in half and my memory game was complete! I laminated them for durability. There are enough stickers in the Mega Alphabet Sticker Assortment to create a game for each individual student; whether you want them working on a few specific letters they still need to master, or if you want to make a game set for each student to take home to practice. When we play, we start out with a few letters that we have recently learned (usually 5-6 letter pairs). We play with that set for a few days, adding letters in as we learn them. I will sometimes make a mat for my students to use, with boxes large enough for them to place the cards in, so they don't worry about getting them lined up correctly. Make this game more challenging by matching up the Mega Alphabet Sticker Assortment letters to letters from magazines or pictures that start with that letter. We practice matching uppercase letters to their upper and lowercase counterparts, depending on which skill my students are ready for. I used some blue material and a permanent marker to create a "pond" for the ABC's Rubber Duckies to "swim" in as my students matched up the letters on the duckies to the letters in the pond. I created two different "ponds"; one with uppercase letters and one with lowercase letters, so two students at different levels could work at the same time. My students were also naming how each rubber duckie matched its letter (G = green, Z = zebra), so as they matched letters, they were also building their sound knowledge. Lastly, I created a quick matching game using a shower curtain and some permanent markers. I wrote the letters on the shower curtain in different colored markers (you can even match them to the color of the Awesome Alphabet Bean Bags for a quick self-checking idea!) and made each letter about 8 inches tall. My students stand at the bottom of the shower curtain and toss the Awesome Alphabet Bean Bags to the corresponding letters. Later in the year, I will turn the shower curtain over and add pictures (stuck on with clear packing tape) or words that start with each letter for my students who need more of a challenge. We also used the Awesome Alphabet Bean Bags to help put letters in order and they will come in handy in the near future for helping us to build words!