In later years, as we kept and displayed some of the better student models, we discovered that our students began putting more effort into their finished product; many of them spent long hours after class to produce models for us that they knew would be displayed for future teacher audiences. Some of the models were so wonderful that later during the year, teachers would request that I send them the models so that they could share them with their own students. Some of the more memorable books we received but could not use with younger students because of the content were: The Alphabet Book of Beer (the four teachers bought and tasted beer using every letter of the alphabet), The ABC’s of Truckin’ (the three teachers drove to UNR from Fallon sixteen times and found a truck to represent every letter of the alphabet), An ABC Book About the Pre-professional Pitfalls of Teaching in the Classroom (the title tells all), and The ABC’s of a Typical Bachelor’s Refrigerator (written by three women.) Some of the books we loved are: The ABC Book of Multiculturalism, The ABC’s of Conversation, Excuses A-Z, Aletteration: An Alphabet Book, Alpha Bemania Crazies, Random Acts of Kindness Through the ABC’s, The ABC Yellow Pages of Reno Restaurants (pictured at right), The ABC Book of T-Shirts, Alphabet Exstravaganza (an alphabet book of alphabet books), All New Awesome Bi-lingual Cool Better-than-ever Book For Kids, An Artist’s Alphabet (see Sandra Young’s Art & Writing Project Page because she was one of the authors of this book), The ABC’s of Dogs. One of the books, which I no longer have but which became amazing teaching tool for the teachers who made it was The Alphabet Book of the Donner Party.

This online project at WritingFix is my attempt to share some of those alphabet lessons with you. Below you will see several of my early lessons which I did with my kindergarten students as well as a Nevada lesson which would be appropriate for 4th and 7th grade teachers. My goal is to have teachers across grade levels use the organizational structure of alphabet to inspire their students to write in the content area.

During the 2009-2010 school year, we will be asking teachers from around the country to share how they use alphabet book projects in all curriculum areas. If you are this type of teacher and you want to become a published lesson author at WritingFix (and earn a free copy of one of the NNWP Print Publications in exchange), contact us at webmaster@writingfix.com. Tell us about your alphabet book project in four or five sentences. If it sounds like an idea we can post here, we will send you our proposal form.