Early Childhood Literacy - Classroom Activities

Lesson Plan - Initiating Lesson Using Alphabet Book: The Z Was Zapped by Chris Van Allsburg
Cox, Teaching Language Arts, 3e, 1999, pp. 36-38.
The Z Was Zapped, by Chris Van Allsburg

Topic:
Reading and writing in response to The Z Was Zapped, by Chris Van Allsburg (1987)

Purposes:
To listen and enjoy literature through discussion and writing; to increase vocabulary; to understand and apply alliteration in writing.

Materials:

• The Z Was Zapped
• paper
• crayons
• pencils

Teaching Sequence:

1. Read The Z Was Zapped aloud. Ask children to predict what's happening to each letter. Encourage a variety of responses before you check to see what Van Allsburg wrote on the back of each page. Discuss alliteration, which is repeating the same letter or sound. (Note that the verb, or action word, in each sentence begins with the letter illustrated on that page.

2. Discuss the book. Ask open-ended questions, which invite children to think about their own impressions while reading

   "What did you think of the book?"
   "What was you favorite part?"
   "What things could happen to a letter?"

3. Record students responses to the last question on chartpaper to create a "word wall" of their ideas. Pick one letter, or do several. Students could also do this activity in small groups after you demonstrate it with the whole class. Write this at the top of the chartpaper: "Word Wall for the letter M."

4. Have each student pick a letter and draw and write something that's patterned after the book. Encourage students to add alliterative sentences to their drawings and writings about certain letters. If they're interested, they could do more activities with alliteration, such as a storyboard. Younger students or language-minority students who are just learning to speak English could use the word wall for ideas. Or you could take dictation for them, writing their spoken words on their drawings.

Assessment:

• Observe whether students listened to and enjoyed your reading the book aloud and responded to it during the discussion.
• Note what students drew and wrote about in response to the book.

• Have students make a bulletin board with their work.
• Bind the students' work into a class book, and place it in the class library.
• Have children dramatize the action for a certain letter by pantomiming it or creating a dialogue between two letters. Share this activity with the class.
• Ask students to go to the library and find more books by Chris Van Allsburg:

  Jumanji (1981)
  The Sweetest Fig (1993)
  Bad Day at Riverbend (1995)

• Have students go to the library and find more alphabet books that use alliteration:

  A, My Name is Alice (Bayer, 1984)
  Animalia (Base, 1986)
  Aster Aardvark's Alphabet Adventures (Kellogg, 1987)

  And here are more great alphabet books for students of different ages:

  For Young Students: Grades K-2
  A, B, See! (Hoban, 1982)
  The ABC Bunny (Gag, 1933)
  Brian Wildsmith's ABC (Wildsmith, 1962)
  Chicka Chicka Boom Boom! (Martin & Archambault, 1989)
  Eating the Alphabet: Fruits and Vegetables from A to Z (Ehlert, 1989)
  Old Black Fly (Aylesworth, 1992)

  For Older Students: Grades 3-5
  Anno's Alphabet: An Adventure in Imagination (Anno, 1975)
  Gretchen's ABC (Simpson, 1991)
  The Handmade Alphabet (Rankin, 1991)
  Hosie's Alphabet (Baskin, 1972)
  Illuminations (Hunt, 1989)
  The Underwater Alphabet Book (Pallotta, 1991)

  For Students of Any Level
  A, B, C's: The American Indian Way (Red Hawk, 1988)
  Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions (Musgrove, 1976)
  A Cajun Alphabet (Rice, 1976)
  The Calypso Alphabet (Agard, 1989)
  A Caribou Alphabet (Owens, 1988)
  A Peacable Kingdom: The Shaker Abecedarius (Provensen & Provensen, 1978)