The letter of the week was
Z.
And the name of the game was FUN.
After all, the letter Z gives us so many chances to have fun learning.
One of our math centers was this fill in the number activity with ZOO KEEPERS.
the question mark is the spot that needs to be filled in.And we all know that filling in the INITIAL NUMBER is very hard.
Check out this more of these mats.
Another math activity we complete is this Zebra Ten Frame.
There are many ways to fill in these frames.
This student counts one to one to fill in this ten frame.
There are two sides of this sheet.
This student counts sets of 5s to fill in the ten frame.
See how they color the whole row at a time to fill in the boxes?
I also love the number 9 box.
Do you see the X in the last slot?
I asked the student why they did that.
That student said,
“I knew that ten was one less than 9 so I crossed out one box.
Then I colored in the rest.”
Are we building our number sense?
Yes.
Here is a phonics activity we use in the beginning of the week
to sort out letter confusion for the sound Z.
We do a whole group sort to separate the Zz sound from the Bb sound.
Then in a word work section of Daily 5,
we complete this sheet to check the boxes of Bb and Zz.
We also take some time to identify the letter Z,
esp when it is close to the letter Mm.
Once we wrap our heads around the letter Zz sounds and formation,
we work hard on using its sound to make words.
Here is one of the phonics sheets we use.
And here is another one day’s phonics activity.
And we also practice FORMING our letters Zz.
One of our new favorite activities is this Zz chart… independently.
I give my students a letter Zz book and let them read to find Zz words.
(I use the Alpha tales Letter Books and printable mini books for this activity.
You can also use Scholastic points here.)
They are doing an awesome job reading the book,
using the picture clues, and so on.
And I noticed that they are paying more attention
to the z words in the book
by doing these charts
independently.
Integrating Readers
And speaking of reading,
we use these Zz word readers too!
We read through them and fill them out in Daily 5.
(There are two versions.
One version comes fill out out and ready to be read.
Another version has blanks to write in.)
Here is an example of the inside of the reader.
Was the letter Zz fun?
YES
Did we learn a lot?
YES
I can’t wait to do it all again next year too!
You can check out these Letter Zz material…
{Which contains all these activities except the printable reader.)
And this pack of ABC Readers here.
Nice post!