In this post, I am sharing a literacy station that I created for a kindergarten class. I had 4 groups of 6 students for about 10 minutes each. I was told beforehand that the students are working on and learning the letters of the alphabet so I decided to create an alphabet memory card game!

Literacy Station In Use:

I made the cards out of cue cards and printed off image templated I made on canva. I also cut both the templates and the cue cards out to better fit the kindergartens hands. My station had the upper case and lower case letter match with a picture of something that started with the letter as a visual aide. I developed and changed my station to best fit each group and quickly made a few changes. I came into this with the idea that all of the students knew how to play memory already but I should not have expected this. Although there were a few students who knew, I had to change and explain the rules as we went on.

Adaptations/Modifications:

Group 1: I started by playing the original game but every time they flip a card they must say out loud what the letter is. This worked great! But not many matches were made as there were a LOT of cards for them. Students still developed their letter recognition by saying out loud what letter it was and a word that starts with that letter.

Group 2: I made the change where once a card has been flipped, it stays flipped up so it would speed up the game and students could visually see the letters and look for the match. Matches were being made very quickly with this new rule and a little competitive nature began to show.

Group 3: Because this is a learning station, I did not want the students to be focused on “winning” and “losing,” but rather developing the letter recognition skill, so I continued with the cards staying flipped up but changed it so you could only have 3 turns in a row max. This allowed the students to have a more equal amount of cards so they all left feeling good about their learning and amount of cards they received.

Group 4: For the last group, the only thing I changed was that I looked up at their alphabet list and removed the letters that they did not yet know. It sped up the game and the students looked more comfortable and confident.

Examples:

Curricular Connections: Kindergarten ELA

Big Idea: Playing with language helps us discover how language works

Curricular Competency: Use sources of information and prior knowledge to make meaning. Use developmentally appropriate reading, listening, and viewing strategies to make meaning. Explore foundational concepts of print, oral, and visual texts

Content: literary elements and devices. concepts of print. letter knowledge. phonemic and phonological awareness.