Teaching grade 3 students their ABC's

[pengyou]

In the school I am teaching in, they begin teaching English in the third grade, 8-10 years old, starting from the ABC's. All of the beginning texts I have seen, however, are written for 5 and 6 year olds. Can anyone recommend a beginning textbook that is written for 9 year olds? I really feel that the simplicity of the textbooks that I am using now is a demotivating factor.

[Sally Olsen]

There are quite a few ABC books that have different topics. I know there is one on Canadian items for the ABC's, one on different types of transportation and so on. You could use something that the older children would be interested in or create something. Have you looked at enchantedlearning.com? They have materials to print out. Can you use names? I used animal puppets which they enjoyed - we had X as a puppet that really couldn't be classified, some sort of monster. I also bought those plastic tiles that have the alphabet in the center, enough tiles to make a five sided box with A on it and so on. Then I filled the boxes with small plastic toys that started with that letter - apple, ant, artichoke, and so on. Or we would pass around a paper bag with small plastic letters in it or small plastic toys and they had to put them in the right boxes. I also had a rug with the alphabet printed on it in steps and the children went around the path naming off the alphabet. You can also gets groups of three or four to make the shapes of the letters with their bodies. You need four for M and W. At one time I had small packs of alphabet cards for each letter for each child. I don't remember how I did that but we played a lot of games with those packs of cards and as a final task they had to put them in alphabetical order. I used to start with about 8 cards and build as they knew the first letters in order. I imagine they have a rap version of the ABC song by now. Check on Youtube.