09/15/2014

During this classroom time I was able to work with the students during their small groups.  There were 4 groups reading, writing, math and alphabet.  I worked with the students that were working on the alphabet group.  The teacher had the alphabet written on strips of papers and then had all of the students names printed on small strips of papers that she cut out.  The students would take the names and put them under the letter that the name started with.  So if it was Riley they would put it under the Rr.  Of course the first thing each student wanted to do was find their own name and put it where it was supposed to go.  Once they did that they really got into finding the letter to match.  A few of the students were a little disappointed that they didn't have a name for every letter of the alphabet but soon realized they could figure out other words that would fit.  Once all the names were placed they started to to look at the letters with no names and would try to figure out words that started with those letters.

I really liked this activity.  It not only reinforced the learning of letters and sounds but the kids really did show that they could think outside the box.  Once the names were gone they came up with their own sort of game to continue in their learning.  They would think of words and really sound them out and figure out what letter they were using and how it matched up with the letters in the alphabet.  This was a great learning activity that helped me see that sometimes the students don't even realize they are learning because they are having fun.