Lesson Plan #:AELP-INT0012

Create an Alphabet Book

An Educator's Reference Desk Lesson Plan

Author: Carolyn Creger
School or Affiliation: Natrona County School, Casper, WY
Endorsed by: These lesson plans are the result of the work of the teachers who have attended the Columbia Education Center's Summer Workshop. CEC is a consortium of teacher from 14 western states dedicated to improving the quality of education in the rural, western, United States, and particularly the quality of math and science Education. CEC uses Big Sky Telegraph as the hub of their telecommunications network that allows the participating teachers to stay in contact with their trainers and peers that they have met at the Workshops.

Date: May 1994

Grade Level(s): Kindergarten, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Subject(s):

Overview: Making an alphabet book on any topic is a fun learning experience for students K-12. The idea can be used in many subjects.

Purpose: To help students learn a topic through research, drawing, and the production of a finished product.

Objectives: As a result of this activity, the students will be very familiar with their topic and will have used some thinking skills, research skills, art skills, and cooperative skills.

Resources/Materials: Alphabet books or access to library, dictionaries, encyclopedias, paper, pencil, crayons or other media.

Activities and Procedures:

  1. Look at alphabet books, specifically Animalia by Grahame Base.
  2. Assign letters of the alphabet to individuals, partners, or groups. Topics could be: invertebrates, chemicals, compounds, toys, countries, adverbs, adjectives, cities, plants, people, etc.
  3. Do research, if need be, to find the core word for the page. Brainstorming could be done for this.
  4. Create a sentence for the page that includes a noun, verb, adjective and adverb plus other words if wanted. Brainstorm and do research to find these.
  5. Design a page for the book putting as many pictures of items beginning with that letter as appropriate plus the sentence.

Additional Activities: Exchange pictures and have someone else list all the words with that letter, make an index for the book, write authors of alphabet books, compare and contrast alphabet books, present the finished books to the library and other classes, lower grades share their books with upper grades, secondary students share their books with elementary students if appropriate or with other classes, posters made by students instead of a book, lists made by students for each letter and posted.

Tying It All Together: Enjoy and discuss the finished product.