Browse lesson plans

ABCs by the week

This is an ongoing series of lessons to teach the 26 letters of the alphabet through functional skills that can be used on a daily/weekly basis building on and transferring to other educational tasks. These lessons incorporate coloring, marking, painting, cutting, pasting, creating, listening and following directions.

Format: lesson plan (grade K English Language Arts)

By Karen Dawsey and Sherry Waters.

Letter recognition with Alphabet Band and Express

This activity will reinforce letter recognition along with letter order. Students will watch a video, listen to stories and play CD games on the computer to aid in recognition of alphabet letters, sounds and order.

Format: lesson plan (grade K English Language Arts)

By Levrah Hall.

The long and short of it!

This lesson will assist students in recognizing and discriminating short and long vowel sounds.

Format: lesson plan (grade 1 English Language Arts)

Magic E: Decoding/encoding with CVC & CVCE

Students will participate in two activities involving the consonant-vowel-consonant-silent e (CVCE) pattern: a decoding activity involving attaching a clothes pin with the letter e printed on it to consonant-vowel-consonant words (CVC) and sounding the new CVCE words; and an encoding activity involving dictation of CVC and CVCE words from the first activity which students are to write using auditory and tactile strategies. These activities require that students have prior knowledge of consonant and long and short vowel sounds as well as blending of these sounds in CVC pattern words.

Format: lesson plan (grade 1 English Language Arts)

By Julia Huff Jerome.

Phonics fun

Kid Pix Deluxe software is needed for this lesson. Using this program, students will decode and blend one-syllable short-vowel words and words ending with silent "e" to match pictures with words as well as to spell names of pictures.

Format: lesson plan (grade 1 English Language Arts)

By Jo Voigt.

Vowel, consonant, vowel your way to better reading

This is a lesson for Secondary Special Education Teachers who teach exceptional children who are reading at the second grade level. Students will learn decoding patterns using vowels and consonants to divide words into syllables in order to sound out the word.

Format: lesson plan (grade 1–2 English Language Arts)

By Julie Wilson.

Resources on the web

Alphabetizing with original stories

Students brainstorm word lists for each letter of the alphabet and construct sentences to include in an illustrated alphabet book. This lesson provides leveled instruction in alphabetization for basic, intermediate, and advanced students and alternative... (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade K–1 English Language Arts)

Provided by: ReadWriteThink

Gingerbread phonics

In this ReadWriteThinklesson, early readers use familiar words from a traditional story to learn letter-sound correspondence. The teacher conducts a shared reading of The Gingerbread Man with the whole class. Students then use words from the... (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade K–1 English Language Arts)

Provided by: ReadWriteThink

Phonics through literature: Learning about the letter "M"

Phonics is an important part of literacy instruction that can be taught within the context of reading children's literature. This ReadWriteThink lesson incorporates the use of children's literature, in addition to various learning centers and activities... (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade K English Language Arts)

Provided by: ReadWriteThink

Starfall

An interactive, research-based learning environment for beginning readers. (Learn more)

Format: website/lesson plan

Provided by: Starfall

Using repetition and picture cues to foster independent young readers

This lesson from ReadWriteThink invites kindergartners to share their knowledge of letters and sounds in a large group setting and gives teachers an opportunity to assess student's knowledge in this area. Each student contributes a page to make a classroom... (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade K English Language Arts)

Provided by: ReadWriteThink