Jay Austinson

The Letters Y and Z

Standard

1.8.5.5 Add drawings or other visual displays to descriptions when

appropriate to clarify ideas, thoughts, and feeling.

Objective
Content: Students will demonstrate the ability to write 10 lower and upper case
letters (Y and Z). Students will recreate pictures from the smartboard with
drawings and labels.
Language: Listen, recreate, demonstrate, examples

Materials

Pencils, Alphabet Journal, colored pencils

Teacher: Smartboard, ABC Rhyme Time book, Computer

Instruction

Opening:
Begin by calling students to the rug. Ask them to sit in ready positions.
Say: First graders, who can tell me the two letters we will be talking about
today? Wait for response. Today were talking about the letters Y and Z.
Who can tell me what sound Y makes? Wait for response. Youre right, Y
makes the yah sound. Who can tell me a word that starts with the yah
sound?
Write student responses on the white board.
Read ABC Rhyme Time book. Have students tell you all the Y words in the
poem.
Write three examples of upper and lower case Ys on the whiteboard.
Recreate the worksheets formatting on the board (two continuous
horizontal lines with dotted horizontal line in between).
Send students back to desks, tell them to pull out their Alphabet Journals
and open to the Y page.
Ask them to think of words that start with the letter Y.
Activity
Open Microsoft Word on desktop computer and turn on Smartboard. Ask
students to name examples of words that begin with Y.
Using clipart, place student examples onto the Word document. Add
labels to help with spelling.
Instruct students to use our examples to recreate their own drawings, with
labels, at the top of the page.
Instruct students to write ten examples of lower and upper case Ys when
finished with drawings and labels.
Students finish activity when they have recreated the example sentence in
the space provided.
Closing
Student will be given approximately 25 minutes to complete activity. Walk
classroom to gauge progress.
Students will return to front of classroom and repeat lesson for the letter Z.
Evaluation

After 20 minutes of work time for each letter, walk around the room checking
student work. All students should have 10 properly drawn upper and lower
case letters, a sentence with proper punctuation, and 3 visual representations
(with labels) of words that start with the letter discussed.
Those students finishing early will be instructed to come up with one more
sentence and additional pictures with labels.