Classroom Animal Alphabet Book

Explicit Instruction/Teacher modeling

• Ask students to shout out their favorite letters, and use one of the letters to model the upcoming activity.
• Find the Animal Alphabet page that corresponds with the letter. For example, pull out the Newt page for the letter N.
• Brainstorm a few words that start with the chosen letter (e.g. noisy, now, neat, new, not, and next). Refer to a picture dictionary (online or a hard copy) to find more words that start with the letter N.
• Create a sentence using the animal and some of the words the students thought of, for example:
  • The noisy newt's name is Nina.
  • The neat newt was nice.
• Write the sentence on the whiteboard, then show how you would write it on the alphabet sheet (you can write the sentence above, below, or inside the letter). Make sure to emphasize that not every word in the sentence needs to start with the same letter, and that students should prioritize being creative.
• Elaborate that if students have a hard time creating a sentence with alliteration they can just create a fun sentence about their animal (e.g. The newt likes water).
• Remind students to be creative when coloring their animal. Encourage them to use a variety of colors.

Guided Practice

• Ask each student to think of a letter. Next, have students brainstorm a sentence to go along with their letter, encouraging them to include alliteration. If students struggle to think of a sentence, brainstorm words that start with the letter they chose and record some ideas with corresponding visuals on the whiteboard to support students as they create their sentences.
• Have each student share their sentence with a partner.
• Encourage student volunteers to share their partner's sentences with the rest of the class, or their own.

Independent working time

• Put students in partnerships and distribute two pages of the Animal Alphabet Pages to each pair.
• Provide partnerships with access to online and hard copy picture dictionaries. Explain to the students that they will research their chosen letters by exploring the provided dictionaries and looking for interesting words that begin with their letter to include in their sentences.
• Remind students how to use the online/hard copy dictionaries as needed (depending on how many times they have used these tools in the past).
• Pass out coloring materials to students and remind them to try their best to include alliteration in their sentences.