Lesson Plan for Letter A a: On your lined school paper, write a capital A and three dotted capital A’s. Have your student trace these and try to write at least two on their own; repeat with lowercase letter. You may need to help your student correctly hold their pencil, or even help them to trace and shape the letters if writing is a new skill.
Provide your student with a page from a large print word search puzzle. Write the letter A, at the top, and circle one A on the puzzle. Have the student circle all remaining A’s. Make it fun, like a treasure hunt. When they are done, double check their work. Be sure to praise their effort. A fun activity to try next is to connect the dots. Draw a line that connects all of the circled A’s. This is a great hand-eye coordination activity.
Animal: A great word for this letter is Animal. Talk about what an animal is. What is everyone’s favorite animal? Where do they live, what do they eat? Can you draw one? Another word for this letter is APE. Try to get a couple books at the library on these animals. Read them together and look at the pictures.
Sight Words: These are words that the student should eventually memorize, by sight. A, as, am, at, and Make 2 flash cards of each word. Play games with the cards, such as memory. Re-use the sight word flash cards every lesson, and add to them as you progress through these lessons. Memorization of sight words aid reading speed and comprehension.
Snack Idea: A great snack idea for this letter is Apples. They come in a variety of colors, and are great sliced with peanut butter. Talk about how apples grow on trees, and show you student the seeds inside of the apple.
Color or Shape: This lesson can have more than one color. Use green, red and yellow – the colors that apples come in. You can also use the shape of a circle, like an apple.
Body Part or Movement: This lesson use the body part ARM. It starts with A, and is simple to write. Encourage your student to try writing the word with help. Have the student show you their arms, and count them. Does your student know their right and left sides? Up and Down? Practice these with the student. Take an exercise break and make circles (this lesson’s shape) with your arms.
Music or Reading: Some lessons have more than one song or reading that go well. This lesson try: The song Apples apples apples or The ants go marching by. They are both simple and lively.
Fun Activity: There are many creative things that can be done with this lesson’s letter. You might want to try making apple trees. Help your student draw a tree, color it green. On a separate paper, make small apples of red, green and yellow. Help the student cut and paste the apples onto the tree. Almost every student loves cut and paste project, however mastery of scissors takes patients. If your student is new to scissors, enforce scissor safety rules.
There are other ways to include this lessons letter into your day. Do you know anyone whose name starts with A? Put labels on anything in the house or schoolroom that starts with A. Make posters with the letter A and anything that starts with it. Have fun with your student, use positive reinforcement, and enjoy!
***Be sure to check out my content page for all of the lessons A-Z and a guide for “Lesson Plans with a Letter in Mind”
