Engaging and Interactive Strategies for Teaching Letters in Kindergarten

I am a first year kindergarten teacher, and this is how I teach letters in kindergarten. So first up, I get my post it anchor chart paper, which I absolutely love, and all my markers. I do an anchor chart on every letter, or at least I try to. You know, life’s busy in kindergarten, but I do try to do this every day. My handwriting is not the greatest. My ideas are not the greatest. From telling you all these anchor charts, they’re amazing. You keep them up on the board all day long, all week long, and it helps them to be able to refer back to that letter. This is also really good for visual learners. That’s why I love it so much, because I’m a visual learner. So we go through all about J, and then I ask them, what are some words or what are some things that you can think of that begin with the sound? And then I say, just instead of the letter J, because a lot of them, they don’t understand that yet. So you just say, what starts with the sound? And then do the sound of the letter. That’s what it look like. So cute. Love it. Next, I have an image sitting on their desk. This was for the letter J. This was a G, which is so much fun. You can cut these out and make them into headbands, or you can just let them color them. And I’m putting those in their memory book. My goal is to have an activity or something that the student did in a memory book from each letter. So that’s what I was doing with that Jeep. If not, I’ll let him wear it as a headband home. I can show you all what that means. Then I have these handwriting slides going all day long, and it shows them. It’s a Powerpoint I bought off teacher Pay Teachers. And it shows them how to do the letter J. Then we do lots of handwriting with the letter J. So I do then an individual worksheet that they do with the letter J. And then we also trace in those dry erase pockets all day long. Anytime there’s free time, they get the dry erase markers, and they go over J, which is so important to help them be able to see that all day long and refer back to it all day long. Then we, of course, listen to some Jack Hartman. I love his videos on each letter. Okay. And then lastly, something that I do is I ask students before we go to lunch, recess, the bathroom, before they can line up, they sign up, and they have to give me a word or something that they know that begins with the sound. And today was just so you know, whatever. That begins with the sound of each letter. And that’s what I’m doing right here. So Just trying to keep it on their mind all day long. Bye, y’all.