Purpose

To develop students’ awareness of the alphabet and text.

Developmental Area(s)

Language (Alphabetics)

Motor (Fine Motor)

Cognitive (Sorting and Matching)

Lesson Objective(s)

• Match uppercase letters with their corresponding lowercase letter

Identify the letters of their name

Arrange the letters of their name using magnetic tiles

Materials

• Magnetic tiles

• Permanent Marker

• Board or large display

Preparation

1. Using the letters of each child’s name, write the uppercase letters and lowercase letters. Each tile should have one letter. (Optional: Give each matching letter set the same color to further encourage sorting/matching)

2. Print out the alphabet in each case for each child or write them on a board as a guide (i.e. Aa, Bb, Cc)

3. Write each child’s name on an index card

4. Mix up letters

Procedure

Introduce Activity

• Alphabet letters have big letters and little letters. Use “A” as an example and write out its upper and lowercase letters. Identify which one is big and little.

• Review the alphabet and identify the “big” and “little” letters.

• Call on children to identify the first letter of their name and help them identify the upper and lower case.

Activity

• Alphabet mashup! Present activity and let children begin to match their letter tiles.

• Observe and help children by encouraging them to refer to the written alphabet board (i.e. “This letter looks like that one on the board! Look a the tiny letter next to it, which of your letters looks like that one?”)

• Once children match their letters, guide them to spell their name in tiles using their written name index card (i.e. “Try matching your letter tiles to the letters of your name!”)

Differentiation

General Challenges

• Arrange the letter tiles of the child’s name except for the first two letters and encourage them to match the first two.

• Instead of name letters, use letters that the child has already mastered identifying and encourage them to match the upper and lower cases

• Print a visual representation of the finished product by taking a picture during the prep stage. Encourage the child to simple match while helping them identify the letters

Assessment

When finished the activity, ask children to identify the letters in their names and check that their matching letter cases are correct.