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This post has been co-written with Ben Wolfson, a full-time educator and assistant principal in the USA.
Grab these free lowercase alphabet tracing cards for a quick literacy center that you can use any time of the year!
The end of summer always means one thing for kids; back to school time. For many, it’s a big change to get back into a routine and there’s that heady mix of excitement and anxiety as students walk into your classroom for the first time. While the first six weeks are spent building classroom community and building routines, you’ll also want some familiar academic activities to ease them back into learning.
These trace and erase handwriting practice pages are easy to use and will help to develop and refresh their letter formation skills from the previous year.
How Do Traceable Letters Help With Literacy?
One of the biggest goals of any early literacy programs is to move students from simple mark making to being able to express themselves with their words on paper. To be able to do this, they need to master the letter formation for each and every letter in the alphabet. As with all early literacy skills, the key to success is repeated practice, and using traceable letters has to be part of your program. Not only does lowercase alphabet tracing teach students the correct way to form each letter, but also gives them reading practice to recognize each letter on the page.
Preparing Back to School Lowercase Alphabet Tracing Cards
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These back to school handwriting practice cards are easy to use; just download and print off copies of the letters you’re studying that week. It’s a great idea to laminate them so you can use them for trace and erase or playdough activities.
Using Trace And Erase Cards In Your Centers
While repeated practice is the best way to help your students with their handwriting practice, it’s possible for them to become complacent if they’re required to do the same trace and erase tasks over and over again. To keep things fresh, try some of these alphabet tracing activities:
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Use playdough – instead of giving students a dry erase marker to work with, try giving them a block of playdough. Initially they’ll just take a block and mold it into the letter shape, but you can encourage them to roll it out in a “worm” and use that to follow the arrows on the traceable letters page.
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Describe a letter – as with any literacy center, students will enjoy it more if you can turn it into a game. For this activity, have students work with a partner, and take it in turns to pick a letter and describe how to draw it without saying the name of the letter. For example, they might say “start at the top and draw a straight line down then go halfway back up and draw half a circle” to describe a “b”.
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Match to letter sounds – another early literacy goal is teaching students that letters have both names and sounds (and in some vowel cases, multiple sounds). You can run a small center in which you call out letter sounds for students to trace, and they have to translate the sound that the letter makes to the form it takes on page to be successful.
More Themed Centers Perfect for Back to School:
My Back to School Themed Centers is a variety pack of 10 games focused on early literacy, math and fine motor skills.
These are the games included:
1) Number Practice Mats – practice tracing the numbers 1-10 or form them from playdough, count out the objects and build a tower with the corresponding number of blocks.
2) Marker Measurement – use for standard or non-standard measurement; recording sheet provided for your students to write their answers.
3) School Supplies Addition to 10 – use the picture of the pencil case and school supplies to write out and solve the addition equation.
4) School Supplies Arrange By Size – 30 picture sets to arrange by length or size
5) Count and Tally Puzzles – 3 piece puzzles where students will match up the numbers 1-10 with the correct tally mark representation and count the number of objects.
6) Alphabet Writing Strips – laminate and use dry erase markers to practice capital letter handwriting.
7) Backpack Books Sorting – ask your students to sort the uppercase letters from the lowercase letters and place them into the correct backpacks.
8) School Alphabet Order – students will look at a series of 4 letters written on the board, decide if they are in the correct alphabetical sequence, and choose and thumbs up or down response.
9) School Bus Beginning Sound – match up the beginning lowercase letter to the object that starts with that alphabet sound.
10) School Supplies Syllable Count – students will need to clap out the number of syllables for each labeled picture and write the number in the box or build a tower with the corresponding number of blocks.
Check it out in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.
Alphabet Books We Love:
Other Back to School Printables You’ll Love:
1) Back to School Worksheet Pack – 50 pages with all the skills your students need.
2) School Supplies Count and Write – Preschool and kindergarten kids will practice one to one correspondence and writing number words from 1 to 10 by counting adorable school supplies.
3) School Mazes – 3 different back to school mazes for fine motor practice
4) Lunchbox Notes –Kids will love them and remember fond memories of their time in school when you send them off every morning with these.
5) Bookshelf Scavenger Hunt – Use this printable treasure hunt as a fun literacy game in your classroom or as a hands-on activity to encourage reading for your homeschooling kids.
Stock Up on Supplies for this Center:
Browse My Most Popular Literacy Activites:
1) Valentines Alphabet Clip Strips – Kids will choose among 5 different letters on the strip to identify the matching ones.
2) Alphabet Beginning Sound Coloring Pages – Watch your child become more familiar with each letter of the alphabet as they practice coloring in the objects with that beginning sound.
3) Tommy Turkey’s Alphabet Pie – This turkey-themed letter recognition activity is so simple to prep and makes a great file folder game!
4) Pirate Alphabet Playdough Mats – Just print out the playing mats and ask your child to form the letters out using the playdough provided.
5) Farm Alphabet Find and Cover Letters – Work on letter recognition any time of the year!
6) Werewolf Spin and Cover – Kids will race to find all the letters on their mat this Halloween.
7) Bunny Burrows Game – Fun game for small groups or circle time where students will catch a bunny and say out the sound.
8) Letter-saurus Fossil Digging – Dinosaur lovers will enjoy being a pretend paleontologist and finding all the letters.
9) Alphabet Handwriting Worksheets – Practice lowercase and capital letters with these print-and-go pages.
10) Rainy Day Alphabet – 1 printable, many ways to use.
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