We officially teach one or two letters per week at the beginning of the year. However, all of the latest research points to the importance of learning letters in context rather than in a certain order. This is why I am obsessed with teaching letters through names!
I start playing "the name game" during the second week of school, and I go in alphabetical order. This order is listed on our "Star of the Day" chart. The Star of the Day runs morning meeting, is the line leader and is the first to pick their center. It also teaches alphabetical order in a meaningful context. The star clothespin tells us whose turn it is.
We play The Name Game every morning during Morning Meeting. It seems like a lot, but in reality it takes less than 5 minutes and is SO worth it. It is priceless to hear my little ones say "Oh, John has a J. I have a J too!" or "Bianca and Camila both have six letters!"
Here is how we play the first round of the Name Game.
All you need to prepare is a laminated sentence strip for each child with their name and picture on it.
- Have the Star of the Day come up to the front of the circle and hold their name strip. Ask the other students to notice things about the name (What letters do you see? Is that upper or lowercase?). I usually let the Star pick children with their hands raised. After a few times modeling this they pick it up very quickly.
- Lead the students in counting how many letters are in the name.
- Do The Cheerleader Chant. The teacher says "Give me a J!" and the kids yell J. "Give me an O!" etc. After the letter, yell "What's that spell?" and the kids shout "JOHN!!!" I am sure that the teacher next door loves me for this one!
- Do a chant of the child's choice. Some examples include: old lady, lion, cat, dog, ghost, monster, person with a cold, etc. Anything that they can dream up, we do! This is done in the same call and response style as The Cheerleader Chant.
- Next, cut the name strip into a puzzle. Show children each letter after cutting and ask "What's this letter?"
- Hand each piece to the Star of the Day, who will assemble it in a pocket chart.
After being on display for a day, I place the sentence strip puzzle into an envelope with the child's name and picture on it, and place it on our puzzle shelf. They love doing their own and their friends' puzzles, and I LOVE how much they learn from doing them!
Here is a puzzle that has been cut and placed in the pocket chart (above) and one that will be cut tomorrow (below).
On the left is an example of a puzzle with it's matching envelope. On the right are three name puzzles ready to play with!
Helpful hint:
Use as many colors of sentence strips as possible. Also use multiple colors of markers. The goal is for no two names to be the same color marker and paper. For example, I used 4 colors of sentence strips with 7 different colored markers to create 28 unique combinations.
This way, if you find a stray "a" lying on the floor you will be able to figure out whose it is. If you wanted to get really fancy you could do the same on the outside of the envelope for even easier matching (I was too lazy to do that!)
This idea is based off of the amazing Mrs. Meacham's name game. You can check it out {
HERE}.
