Changing how I teach the ABCs

When I first switched to kindergarten 5 years ago I remember spending HOURS (literally, hours!) every week preparing letter activities.  I remember searching for clip art, tracing and cutting out paper for the corresponding letter craft each week.  I remember photocopying the letter search sheets and letter colouring pages.  HOURS upon HOURS of preparation.  Anyone with me on that one??? (please say yes, so I know I wasn't alone)

As I began my learning journey into the Reggio approach to Early learning, I began to rethink how I taught my students letters and sounds.  I began to understand that students learn best when it is meaningful to them.  Authentic learning.  This really resonated with me, and I believed it to be true.  But I still had this big question weighing on my mind..."HOW does it happen?"  I remembering worrying "What if my students don't care about learning their letters or sounds?  What if they don't respond to the provocations and encouragement we offer?".  I had so many "what if..?" situations running through my mind.  Is that a teacher thing???  Do we all do that, or is that just a special gifting of mine?? LOL.

Anyhow, as my ECE teaching partner and I were setting up the classroom this past August we began to chat about how we wanted to teach letters and sounds.  Since it was our first time working together I didn't know what her thoughts were about this, and I wasn't sure that she'd be too thrilled when I suggested we do away with the traditional methods of teaching letters.  But, since she is seriously just about the most easy-going person on the planet (so thankful she is willing to join me on these crazy adventures) we decided to give it a go and jump in with both feet.  I'm not going to lie, we did sort of make a back up plan that if by mid-October we didn't see results we were going to bail LOL.  But I really believed in my heart that this approach was built on solid research and it just "made sense" to me.

So, on the first day of school we set out our first literacy provocation. We knew what we hoped the students would do, but had no idea if that would play out.  We put out a basket of big sticks, a basket of small sticks and a set of alphabet cards.  Plopped them right in the middle of our carpet.  Said nothing.  And waited...

within 5 minutes 3 kids were checking it out...

within 10 minutes we had 3 letters built out of sticks...

So, what did we do?....looked at each other with a smile (a probably a sigh of relief), and maximized the learning opportunity.  We walked over and asked the students playing there what was going on.  They explained that they were building letters.  Interesting to note, most of them couldn't tell us the name of the letter, but they knew it was a letter.  We asked them if they would leave them built on the rug at tidy up time so that we could share their wonderful idea with the class.  They beamed with pride :)

At the end of that play block we gathered the class on the carpet and shared what had been going on.  Students were shouting out the names of the letters they had built, and we sang songs about the sounds each made.  The kids who had those letters in their names were shouting out, it was wonderful, loud and exciting.  We then challenged the class to help us think of a way to attach the sticks together so that we could keep these "amazing" creations.  Some suggested glue (which was not out for the students yet), others said string, and then finally someone said play doh.  Since we had a play doh center out, we decided that this was the best choice.  We asked the kids if they thought having a separate container of play doh with the sticks would help, and they said yes.

Next play block...more letters.  We repeated the praise in front of the whole class, stopping kids at the centers to admire the newest letters made.  By the end of the first day we had about 6 letters made.  We told the kids that we would try to fasten them together so that we could hang them on the wall for everyone to see.  That night after school we used duct tape and twine to "permanently" secure the sticks together and taped them to the wall.  The other key thing we did was remove the letters already made from the basket.  That way the only letters remaining were the ones we needed for the wall.  After a few days the kids themselves began to note that we had almost made the whole alphabet.  They became motivated themselves to finish and make all 26 letters (which we counted, did subtraction and kept a running tally to see how many we had left to make each day).

It was no surprise to us that all of the letters with straight lines went first (A, E, I, T, W, etc.)  By the end of the week it was only a few students who were highly motivated and really enjoyed this challenge who tackled the letters S, Q, B, C and so on.  But they did it!  And man were they proud of themselves.

We had so many rich discussions with students about the shapes of letters, which letters were almost the same looking, which letters were easy to make and why some were really hard.  All of this in the first week of school...we were shocked.

The final product??....check it out!  This is probably the first thing everyone comments on when they come in the room - well that, and the lighting, but that's another post for another day ;)

Talk again soon,
Carly