In this lesson, students will learn to identify letters and words by exploring one another's names and other words. Each student gets to be "Student of the Day," and the class will explore his or her name and life. Students will learn which letters are in their classmate's name, as well as the words for their friend's hobbies and favorite things. Students will be encouraged to draw and write messages to each other on a daily basis.

In this lesson, students will read the folk tale Jack and the Beanstalk and discuss the word giant and its beginning sound. Students then create their own lists of words that begin with the same sound. Then, students are introduced to words with the soft g sound and create a new list of words with this beginning sound. As a culminating activity, students work individually or in groups to categorize animal names into groups according to their beginning g sound.

In this lesson, students will use their knowledge of letters and sounds to make an alphabet book that focuses on a specific letter. After the teacher models the given letter sound, each student, in turn, repeats the sound and names a word beginning with that letter sound. The teacher pronounces each word, encouraging students to tell the sounds they hear. The teacher writes the word on chart paper or the board, and then repeats these steps for each student. The sentence, "This is a _____.", is written on each page of the book. Each student draws the word they named beginning with the targeted letter and labels it on the line provided. The pages are then combined into a classroom book.

In this lesson, students begin by singing a song to the tune of "Mary Had a Little Lamb". Kindergartners can identify and learn letter names and beginning consonant sounds. First graders will enjoy extending the activity by creating new verses to the song as a class, thus building phonemic awareness and vocabulary. The activity culminates by illustrating the song verses.

In this lesson, the teacher reveals the first letter of the name, having students whose name start with that letter stand. More letters are revealed and students sit down as their name is ruled out. Once the helper is selected, students read the helper's name, count the letters in the name, clap the syllables, spell the name aloud, add the name to the word wall, and make observations about it. Using magnetic letters, students can create words that rhyme with the helper's name. Many additional ideas for playing with the letters of students' names are also presented here.

In this lesson, letter-sound correspondences are taught within a meaningful context in an explicit, systematic, and extensive manner. This lesson uses onset-rime analogy to present word families and spelling patterns. An onset is the consonant letter before the vowel in a given word or syllable, and a rime is the vowel and consonants that follow the vowel in a given word or syllable. Thus, in the word bill, the onset is the letter b and the rime is the letters ill. Furthermore, this lesson supports cooperative and integrative learning where students and teacher learn together and carry out tasks collaboratively.

In this lesson, students learn to identify written words with similar endings by singing and reciting nursery rhymes. Students begin by reciting Humpty Dumpty, identifying two words with similar ending sounds, and creating their own lists of words with the same ending sound. Students repeat this procedure with words from Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater and Jack and Jill. Finally, students access a website to identify the word families featured in other nursery rhymes and then create an illustration and text based on their favorite nursery rhyme.

This lesson provides a framework for introducing students to short-vowel word families. Focusing first on the a family, students work together and individually to learn the word families –at, –an, –ap, and –ack. Teacher modeling is used to introduce the word sort, inviting students to compare, contrast, and reflect on these four word families. Students then work with a partner to practice sorting and reading words with increased speed and accuracy. As their skills and confidence improve, students are asked to sort, read, and write words individually. These lessons can also be adapted to teach other short-vowel word families.

In this lesson, students are first introduced to a variety of books using rebus writing. They then brainstorm lists of rhyming words that they could use in their own rebus poems. Finally, students create their own rebus poems and share them with an audience.