Alphabet Book

This exercise is designed to encourage writing about a particular topic and follows a structure that students might be familiar with. Alphabet books have a term or a idea related to each letter of the alphabet. For example, if you are studying foods, you might start with a page that says "A" is for apple, followed by an image and a description of an apple.

An alphabet book can support Common Core literacy and writing goals.

The format for this activity can be designed with your class and time frame in mind. Here are some variations:

1. Print out a sheet of large letters to be taped or glued to pages, students must pick the topic and draw a picture related to the topic.

2. Combine letters to make the project shorter and allow for flexibility. Some letters may be very difficult to work with (X and Z, for instance. This template has the combined letter chart.

3. Reduce the workload by allowing students to make only 10-15 pages instead of 24 pages for each letter of the alphabet. Try giving them a base number and offering extra credit for additional pages.

4. Working in groups may help them come up with terms related to the topic and allows them to discuss the best ways to represent a concept. Students will also distribute the workload which aids in building teamwork skills.

5. Create a "word wall" instead, give students a page with the text boxes and give them 2-3 minutes to blast out words, concepts and examples as a class (illustrations not needed).

For the most part, this exercise forces them to really think about the topic and ways they can represent concepts. Students seem to enjoy having the opportunity to be creative and seem to really come up with some interesting ways to represent letters.

This image is from a 9th grade group project where students created an alphabet book about topics related to evolution.

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