Letter Gg Ideas To Make Learning Fun

I love diving into letters with a letter of the week.
I know many schools do not use a letter of the week anymore,
but my school district requires it as we use Recipe for Reading.
And honestly… it ins’t a bad thing at all!
So let’s dive into the Letter Gg Ideas to make this letter meaningful.

I do not just focus on one letter all week long.
Instead I focus on that letter, its formation and sound, and how to use it with other letters.
I simply add on, build, and elaborate on our phonics knowledge.

On Monday we pulled out the gel bags for sensory phonics for the first time this year.
(You can read how to create these here.)

We use sand trays and many other sensory experiences so these gel bags
are just another FUN way to make a sensory connection to muscle memory.
We want the lesson be engaging and memorable.

Using our sensory Gg mats, our students work on forming this letter correctly.

And of course they LOVE it.

I also strive to use a letter identification sheet regularly.
I use these on Mondays to see who can differentiate between similar letters easily.

I already know from assessments who knows their letters,
but what about when these little learners are shown very similar letter ?

These letters are a great help in letting them SEE which letters are similar.

I also use simple cut and sorts.
This was an independent group activity.
And they ROCKED it.
I love to see them cut and glue correctly.
Little steps that make a kindergarten teacher happy!

Through the week, we complete phonics activities to guide our learning.
We again focus on using this letter and sound, not just on that one letter.

Well, this techie teacher always likes to step it up a notch!
So on Tuesday, I decided to break out the free app called Nearpod.

I took my phonics activities and uploaded them to this platform.
I give my students the code to log in, which is 5 digital long and a combination of letters and numbers.

Here is just one of our tables working with me whole group on this interactive activity.Don’t worry if you are not one to one on this.
I am not 1:1.
Since I am using a “worksheet” oh this,
I can let a small group of students complete this on an iPad and the other students can do this on an actual worksheet.

We complete phonics activities Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
We count syllables, tap out words, match words to their picture,
and so much more.

Then on Friday we chart our words.
I have tried to chart on Mondays but it tends to be quite painful and hard.
Well, but Friday we have read so many books like our Alphatales stories,
we have completed great sorts, and do so many themed hands on activities,
charting becomes FUN.

This week we placed a charting game.
I divided my class into groups of three, since we had three adults in the room at that time.
Later in the year I will allow students to led, but since this is the first time we have done this, I wanted it to be with adults.
each group is random, no ability grouping here.

Each group goes to a different part of the room and we whisper to write our Gg words.
My group was the red group so we wrote down all the words we could think of that started with a Gg.

And man did we do well!

Next all the groups stop writing and start to listen.
Each group gets to share ONE of their words at a time.
If any of the other groups have that word, everyone has to cross it off their list.
We keep going around and around.
Students are practicing reading their Gg words, listening to the other groups Gg words,
and trying to find it on their list. If no one has our word, we circle it.
The group with the most unique words, the ones that are circled, WIN.

How much fun is this!?

Honestly, this activity took about 30 minutes to play and my class of 24
were HIGHLY engaged and interested in this one!
The red group got 9 unique words.
The green group got 8 unique words.
And the orange group for 4 unique words.
So, yes, my group was the winning group.

One important thing to mention is…
the adults DO NOT help give them words, we just help them write these words down.
Additionally, when the students advance, THEY can man groups and write on their own.

Furthermore, I love getting my student activity engaged in learning. I know you will LOVE my weekly work centers and ideas all about the Gg sound as well.
You can click here to check out all of these ideas.
I create and prep 6 centers each and every week.
And many of these center around the Letter Gg as well.