Ordering the Letters...whole group activity!

When I first started teaching, one of my biggest weaknesses was not being able to plan out how much time each lesson would take. I would either over plan, under plan, or both. I haven't ran into that problem for a couple of years...until today! We accomplished all of our activities for the morning, and I looked at the clock, and we still had 15 minutes until lunch!

I decided to do a whole group activity of organizing the letters from A-Z. Instead of using pocket chart letters, I spotted my jumbo foam letters out of the corner of my eye! Here is what we did...

I gave each child a foam letter. As they were holding their letter I asked them to "whisper their letter to the person next to them," incase they didn't know the letter, the person next to them could help.

We started saying the letters of the alphabet, beginning with "A." When we reached the end and had to make a new row, we would then start saying the letters from that line (instead of starting at letter "A" every time). It is a good strategy to teach them to be able to say the letters starting at a random spot in the alphabet. When we said the letter that a student was holding, he/she would come and put it in the pocket chart.