The co-creation of our "Classroom Alphabet"

It can sometimes be challenging to know what to keep on display to honour the past work of children, but also involve the new children in creating new experiences and connections with their classmates and classroom environment. Since no one was really noticing or interacting with last year's alphabet wall, I felt perhaps we needed to co-create a new one based on the current children's ideas and interests. 

I had a conversation with the children and we all agreed we wanted to make a new alphabet to place on the wall that would involve our new friends. The alphabet that was made the previous year (From line to letters...the co-construction of our Alphabet Wall) was taken down and placed in a basket for the children to still have access to and use if they needed. 

Why should we have an alphabet wall?

"So everyone the start of the letter of their name." Z. G.

"So everyone knows their ABC's song." K. C.

"Some letters are short and some letters are tall." A. J.

"We need to know our letters." J. B.

"So you know how to write!" L. B.

"Some people don't know how to write the letters and they need to know the sounds." J. K.

"You can know the letters in your name." S. F.

"Sometimes you don't know what comes after a letter. This would help." G. S.

"So people know the letters of our name." M. N.

During this conversation, I told the children that I would write down the letters of the alphabet on the chart paper and maybe they could think of some things that represented each letter. 

Among the things suggested were the names of the children in the class and items that were found in our classroom. 

"We can have a classroom alphabet!" Z. G. 

Below are some of the ideas the children mentioned. 
*I apologize for any incorrect spelling of words. I'm trying to record their quick conversations!


Once we had enough ideas for each letter the children decided to do a tally to figure out what to take pictures of.

This project was very timely in that we just received a new iPad Mini for our classroom. When discussing how we wanted to display our alphabet, I asked the children if they wanted to use the new iPad Mini and take photographs of the things they suggested? 

The children were very excited to use this technology. They used the camera on the iPad Mini to take photographs and then they learned how to use the app called Pic Collage to insert the photographs they took and type text over top. 

Pic Collage

The finished classroom alphabet:

We are already using this new alphabet as a resource to support letter identification and other writing activities. Knowing their classroom environment, their peers, and having had the opportunity to create this resource, further supports their learning through the connection and ownership of this authentic experience.