Especially for Teachers

Bright Ideas Lesson Plans

First Grade Activities

Students can use the newspaper to cut out words/phrases to create a story. This enhances creativity and higher level thinking on how to put a story together (the story idea organizing thoughts, finding words, word/story order, etc.). Students can glue the words on paper and then draw pictures to go with their story. This is a more difficult task that can be used with enrichment students or as students become more experienced writers.

WORD WARRIORS: Students use the newspaper to circle known words using a marker. List high frequency words, unit words, or spelling words on the board and have students find and circle with a marker the word in text. This activity is a great way to practice recognizing and identifying words in text. It provides a different avenue to word work. Most of all the newspaper provides a fun way to practice reading words.

ABC: Use the newspaper at an alphabet center to practice abc order. Students cut out letters (as many as they can) and put the letters in abc order. Then they can glue on a sheet of paper. This activity must be modeled. Students of all levels can complete and feel successful. In the beginning of the year, students may have abc but after Christmas they often have a-z. Students may find upper and/or lower case letters for this activity since the objective here is not teaching letters. The teacher may however suggest only upper case or lower case at the students become more experienced with the task. This activity is used throughout the year and can also move into using words cut from the newspaper to put in abc order (by first letter, second letter, etc. Some of the students in my class have gone on to abc order by third letter). This activity has been very successful in my classroom!

It´s as easy as ABC! Students use the newspaper and markers at the alphabet center to locate and isolate letters. They use markers to identify/circle letters in texts (i.s. find as many capital/uppercase letters as you can, find all the lower case b´s, find words that begin with F, etc.). This activity has to be modeled but it is a great activity for the beginning of the year in First Grade. Students can feel some success as readers even if they´re non-readers. It´s a good way to build up knowledge of letters, practice identification in various print, begin process of scanning, hand/eye coordination, and a fun method to teaching/learning letters!

NOUN HOUNDS: Use the newspaper to discover nouns. Students first circle a picture of a noun (the person, place, or thing} and then we "hunt" for the word (i.e. person´s name, Chisholm Elementary, bus, cat) to match the noun in the picture. Usually we find something the students can relate to so it makes finding the words in text easier. Students then circle the word in text with a marker. this activity is done whole g roup with each student having his/her own newspaper. The activity really makes this first grade objective a lot more meaningful and fun. I usually find students continuing to search and find more nouns throughout the day!

Students love to look at the pictures. To inspire creative writing, students cut out pictures from the newspaper, glue the picture on a large piece of white paper and write a story about what they think the picture is about.Students use words they know and articulate sounds to write unknown words in order to do as much as they c an on their own. Their stories can b e real, fantasy, and/or humorous. Before using this at a center, independent work, or whole group it is best to model the process and various sample stories. My students love this activity! They enjoy doing this activity several times a week. They have become very independent and uninhibited writers!

Sharon Wiley
Chisholm Elementary

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