Alphabet Arcs: What do I do with them?
Alphabet arcs are an instructional tool for practicing alphabet knowledge. They are an excellent way to practice foundational skills of phonemic awareness, the alphabetic principle, and basic phonics. They also help students build fluency and automaticity with letter names and letter sounds. And kids love them!
If you are looking for a great Alphabet Arc template, I’ve got you covered! I have some paid and free options listed here:
A very affordable option from Abecedarian ABC (with letters)
A free option from the Florida Center for Reading Research (no letters)
You can also do a search on TeachersPayTeachers for ‘Alphabet Arc’ and find many other paid and free options!
In this blog, I want to share lots of ways to use Alphabet Arcs. These ideas can work in classrooms as part of core instruction, small group work, and center time. These ideas can also be used in intervention settings. While they are most suited for PreK through 1st grade, the Alphabet Arc can be a helpful tool for struggling readers in higher grade levels.
Activities
Building the Arc
The first, and most obvious activity, is building the alphabet arc. Depending on your student’s skill level, you can support them with various scaffolds. When building the arc, start with accuracy and them focus on fluency & speed.
Use various templates that include more or fewer letters on the mat to support students.
Sing the Alphabet Song while building, to help students sequence the letters correctly
Take turns adding letters with the student to lessen the size of the task.
Games
After you have built the Alphabet Arc, you can play some fun games with students to get extra practice with letter names and sounds. You can play these games with all of the letters or focus in on specific letter names and sounds.
I SPY Variations:
Say a letter name and student finds the letter.
Say a letter name and student finds the letter and says the sound.
Say a letter sound and student finds the letter.
While the student looks away, take away a letter or a few letters. Then challenge the student to figure out which letter(s) are missing.
Say a letter name (or sound). The student finds the letter and then finishes saying the alphabet, starting at the letter they found.
Clean Up Game: Play any of these games while cleaning up the letters at the end of the activity.
Sorting Letters
An alphabet arc gives you lots of opportunities to compare and contrast letters. Here are a few ways you could sort the letters.
vowels & consonants
letter shape:
tall & short letters (lowercase)
letters that go up, stay between the lines, and go down (lowercase)
letters with straight lines & letters with curved lines
letter names that say their sound (B, D, P, etc) & letter names that don’t say their sound (W, Y, etc)
Building Words
Once students have a few letter-sound correspondences under their belt, you can start using the alphabet arc to build words. Warm up by building the alphabet arc and then build words. It is an excellent activity to bridge alphabet knowledge and basic phonics!
Phoneme-Grapheme Mapping Routine:
Teacher says a word. Student repeats the word.
Student segments the sounds in the word. (Use manipulatives, if needed.)
Student matches the letter to each sound in the word, pulling the letters down on the mat to build the word.
Student repeats the word.
BONUS: Student spells the word.
The alphabet arc is great for practicing basic VC and CVC words. Be thoughtful about the words you choose, since there is only one copy of each letter.
You can boost handwriting practice by having students write the words instead of pulling down the letter tiles. Use writing guidelines, as needed, to support proper letter formation
Activity Cards
I’ve created several different types of activity cards to use with the Alphabet Arc. My goal with these cards was to create some activities that students could do for extra practice after completing similar activities with the teacher. These activity cards can be used as part of instruction and can fit into centers or independent practice! You can grab the whole bundle here or individual products below!
Some online resources:
In my search for all things Alphabet Arcs, I did discover a few enticing online products! They’re linked here, in case you love them too!
Junior Learning Magnetic Alphabet Arc: Great for a classroom display or for doing alphabet arc activities on the whiteboard!
Junior Learning Alphabet Arc Pop-It: A fun variation for saying the letter names and sounds in the alphabet!
Joynote Classroom Magnetic Letters: My favorite affordable magnetic letters!
Junior Learning Rainbow CVC Objects: A fun way to practice phoneme-grapheme mapping without having to think of your own CVC words!
