Learning Activities

In this activity, students will demonstrate the advanced phonemic awareness skill of manipulating phonemes. Students will work with a partner, using picture cards to delete phonemes in initial blends. This activity can be extended by having students count the phonemes in each word and sorting the picture cards based on the number of phonemes in each word.

This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

Students will create audio recordings of short poems and will select movements to express the ideas and descriptions included in the poems.

This activity was created as a result of the Arts COS Resource Development Summit.

In this learning activity, the teacher will provide instruction on the vowel team conventions for representing the long vowel a sound. The students will use picture clues to determine words with long a spelled ai or ay and write the words using the correct vowel team. Students will then participate in a read and roll activity to practice reading words with long a vowel teams ai and ay.

This activity results from the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

The purpose of this “during” activity is to provide practice opportunities for students to engage in the manipulation of phonemes through an activity called "chaining." This activity supports students in building their articulation and distinguishing between the initial, medial, and final sounds in words. "Chaining" allows students to warm up their brains and practice hearing, seeing, and moving letters around to recognize patterns and repetition in language that will support their phonological and phonemic awareness. 

This resource was created in partnership with Dothan City Schools.

This learning activity should be used at the beginning of a phonics/word study lesson. In this learning activity, students will use a Ten Frame to break a word into separate sounds and then write the sounds to correctly spell the word. This activity should be used with words less than 5 sounds and the words should all use the same skill. 

This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

Students will participate in a collaborative guessing game with another classroom from a "mystery place" somewhere on the globe through a video conference. This game helps students learn about geography, culture, and the similarities and differences of how children live all over the world. Students are to prepare questions ahead of time to help them pinpoint their location. These questions are not only focused on geography but culture as well. While honing their questioning and conversation skills each class takes turns answering questions about each other until their location has been pinpointed.

This activity was created as a result of the DLCS COS Resource Development Summit.

In this whole group activity, students will listen to two versions of a familiar fairy tale and consider how changes in the point of view affect their understanding of the story and their feelings about the characters. Students will complete an exit slip to judge mastery of the lesson content.

This activity results from the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

Students will watch two videos with retellings of the classic story, "The Three Little Pigs." The purpose of the first video is to provide a first telling of the original story of "The Three Little Pigs." The second video, "The Three Little Javelinas," will offer a retelling of the classic story. These videos will provide background information and a basis for the discussion around the comparison and contrast of story elements.

This resource was created in partnership with Dothan City Schools.

The teacher will introduce students to the word syllable and demonstrate to students how to count syllables in words using the digital tool. Next, the teacher will read a haiku poem to students and have the students count the syllables in the haiku using the strategy demonstrated in the video clip. Lastly, the teacher and students will read a variety of haiku poems, with the teacher encouraging the students to identify the syllable pattern in each poem using non-locomotor movements. The students will use mental math to calculate the number of syllables present in each line of a haiku poem and describe how this pattern supplies rhythm in a haiku. 

This activity was created as a result of the Arts COS Resource Development Summit.

Students will use ReadWorks to read two articles and discuss that there are many different kinds of living things and that they exist in different places on land and in water. The students will create a Venn diagram to compare and contrast water and land animals.

This activity results from the ALEX Resource Gap Project.

The purpose of this “After” activity is to assess students' ability to manipulate phonemes through an activity called chaining. This activity supports students in building their articulation and distinguishing between the initial, medial, and final sounds in words. Chaining allows students to warm up their brains and practice hearing, seeing, and moving letters around to recognize patterns and repetition in language that will support their phonological and phonemic awareness. Using this as an assessment tool is a great way to identify students that have not fully mastered substitutions, deletions, and additions.  

This resource was created in partnership with Dothan City Schools.

During this learning activity, students will identify phonics skill-specific words in a passage and then get with a partner to read the passage to become more fluent in their reading. This learning activity can be used with any fluency passage that targets a specific skill. The digital resource attached to this activity has free r-controlled vowel passages available, but any skill-specific passage that is grade-level appropriate will work. 

This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

Students will be able to interpret the mood of a piece of art by describing the setting of the piece and the colors used within. 

This activity was created as a result of the Arts COS Resource Development Summit.

In this whole group activity, students will listen to two versions of a familiar fairy tale. The students will complete a Venn diagram to compare and contrast elements of the two fairy tale versions.

This activity results from the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

The purpose of this activity is to provide a comprehensive list of possible questions that can be used to build comprehension into the viewing/reading of the different versions of “The Three Little Pigs.” These questions will support students’ building of mental maps that will allow them to apply their understanding of two stories for comparison and contrast. Once the videos/books have been seen and questions discussed, students will be able to complete a Venn diagram that compares the story’s literary components (i.e., setting, characters, plot, and sequence).

This resource was created in partnership with Dothan City Schools.

This activity is a digital breakout to enhance a unit with animal standards or for classes that have a field trip to the Birmingham Zoo. It can be used before or after the field trip or during the unit. It is an activity that will build collaborative and critical thinking. It can be used as a whole group activity for K-2 classrooms or for teachers/classrooms that are not familiar to digital breakouts. It can be an activity for small groups in K-5 rooms if students are familiar with digital breakouts. 

This Learning Activity was created in partnership with the Birmingham Zoo. 

In this learning activity, students will participate in a partner guided “obstacle course” to simulate computer programming. Next, students will discuss how a common activity (making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich) requires steps and how the steps can be written as an algorithm. Next, students will take the steps and put them in paragraph form using transition words in relation to sequencing. Last, students will complete a lesson on code.org that requires them to write an algorithm.

This activity was created as a result of the DLCS COS Resource Development Summit. 

In this whole group activity, students will write their own fractured fairy tale versions, told from the point of view of the villain.

This resource was created as a part of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

In this activity, students will practice the advanced phonemic awareness skill of deleting the initial sound in a one-syllable word that has an initial consonant blend using an Elkonin box mat and manipulatives. 

This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

The teacher will begin the activity with a read-aloud of A House for Hermit Crab by Eric Carle. Next, the teacher will allow students to use the text features, specifically illustrations, in the picture book to describe the plot of the story. Then, the teacher will lead students on a "nature walk" around the school to collect items to create an imaginary house. Lastly, the students will design an imaginary home using the natural objects found on their walk while individually following sequential steps.

This activity was created as a result of the Arts COS Resource Development Summit.

In this whole group activity, the teacher will provide instruction on identifying the key elements in a familiar fairy tale (characters, setting, and plot). The students will complete a story map graphic organizer to identify key elements and delineate the plot.

This activity results from the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

The purpose of this after activity is to provide opportunities to continue to build students' comprehension of the two versions of "The Three Little Pigs.” When students retell and summarize, they are activating prior knowledge and understanding of the story. When comparing and contrasting, students review story elements and analyze them for similarities and differences. 

This resource was created in partnership with Dothan City Schools.

The purpose of this activity is to obtain information on the wetlands ecosystem using the Pebble Go Online Encyclopedia. Using the informational text, students will define a wetland, determine where wetlands are located,  identify the plants and animals found in a wetland, and identify the layers of a wetlands ecosystem. Students will write about and illustrate their findings in a trifold brochure. 

This learning activity was created as a result of the ALEX - Alabama Virtual Library (AVL) Resource Development Summit.

After students have had a lesson on the "Super 3!" research method and how to maneuver the Alabama Virtual Library site, students will complete a shared research activity answering the essential question: How do animals adapt to the area in which they live? The teacher will model how to research using the PebbleGo database from the Alabama Virtual Library.  Finally, students will complete an extension activity where they will research a specific animal and how it survives in its own habitat.

This activity was created as a result of the DLCS COS Resource Development Summit.

In this whole group activity, students will listen to a read aloud to illustrate using different voices to illustrate different points of view.

This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

In this introductory activity, the teacher will introduce the terms phoneme and blend. The teacher will demonstrate how to delete a phoneme (sound) from the beginning of a spoken word that contains a consonant blend (a group of two to three consonants that retain their sound in a word). 

This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

This activity is designed to be presented after the activity Dancing to Haikus-Part 1: Counting Syllables. In this activity, the teacher will introduce pairing a haiku poem with locomotor movements, such as jumping, twirling, and skipping. The students will develop ideas to connect locomotor movements with prompting from a haiku poem. 

This activity was created as a result of the Arts COS Resource Development Summit.

This activity uses YouTube as its digital resource. "Longitude and Latitude Meaning Definition for Kids" is a video that explains the definitions of latitude and longitude. The students will also engage in a Quick Write about the video relating to our essential question, What do the geographical terms latitude and longitude mean? Afterward, the students will participate in a hands-on activity.

This activity results from the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

The purpose of this “before” activity is to provide practice opportunities for students to manipulate phonemes through substitutions of initial, medial, and final sounds. This activity supports students in building their articulation and distinguishing between the initial, medial, and final sounds in words. Advanced Phonemic Awareness Skills (Google Slides) allows students to warm up their thinking processes and practice hearing, seeing, and manipulating letters to recognize patterns and repetition in language. This is a great way to support their phonological and phonemic awareness skills. 

This resource was created in partnership with Dothan City Schools.

This learning activity should be used at the end of a word study/phonics lesson. In this learning activity, students will use their knowledge of phoneme-grapheme correspondences to write a short story about their favorite animal (or any topic chosen by the teacher).

This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

This lesson looks at a valid print source, valid Internet source, and an example of fake news. Students will learn how to differentiate between real and fake news in preparation for research.

This activity was created as a result of the DLCS COS Resource Development Summit.

In this small group activity, students will read a reader's theater fairy tale, using different voices for the characters.

This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.