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.

Cross-checking: An early reading strategy

Beginning readers need to learn how to bring together two sources of information simultaneously. They have to think about what would make sense and think about letters/sounds; cross-checking. Most children prefer to do one or the other, but not both. Therefore, some children guess something that is sensible but ignore the visual (letter/sound) and others guess something which is close to the visual but makes no sense in the sentence. This activity will demonstrate how to cross check.

Format: lesson plan (grade 1 English Language Arts)

By Jane Kate Blackmon.

Fishing for beginning sounds

This lesson introduces the beginning sounds for picture words.

Format: lesson plan (grade K English Language Arts)

By Deborah Kirby.

Itsy, bitsy spider

The learner will use the words of the fingerplay "The Itsy, Bitsy Spider" to create a book.

Format: lesson plan (grade K English Language Arts)

By JanetD White.

Letter books

Kindergarten children are usually familiar with beginning sound "ABC" books with texts such as "A is for apple." In this activity, repeated for each consonant letter, art, writing, conventional spelling, and reading are combined to create a personal "Letter Book" for each child.

Format: lesson plan (grade K English Language Arts)

By Clara McKenzie.

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.

Newspaper words

Students will use newspapers to find the letters for certain words, such as spelling words, or words with certain beginnings or endings, and then create those particular words by cutting and pasting.

Format: lesson plan (grade K English Language Arts)

By Emily Goodson.

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.

Wet your kinders' chops on the sound "op"!

Students will explore the sound “Op” with a reading of Charlie Parker Played Be-Bop by Chris Raschka and a showing of the PBS Between the Lions episode #130 “Be Bop,” which also features the Charlie Parker book and explores the “op” sound.

Format: lesson plan (grade K English Language Arts)

By Dirk Robertson.

Resources on the web

Rooting out meaning: Morpheme match-ups in the primary grades

Students engage in morphemic analysis by using their knowledge of morphemes to define words, using a dictionary to confirm the meaning and spelling of unfamiliar words, and combining morphemes to create new words. Students use Readwritethink's “Morpheme... (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 3–5 English Language Arts)

Provided by: ReadWriteThink