AWOL from the Alphabet

I'm beginning to feel a little crazy because I have been working so much. My mind is spinning with ideas and inquiries. Perhaps I've punched out my fair share of word cards. I've got the boards & charts done, I even put up some interactive museums. One is my usual: a museum about rules, game rules, class rules, the law of gravity, safety rules and so on.

My other museum display is new. It's about my missing letter A. The letter A disappeared this summer while I was on vacation, and it is no where to be found. You look up at the alphabet above the front board, and there's a big gaping space where the a should be. I put up a note on the teacher's room board just as if it was a lost kitten. Someone wrote back "Must be a victim of vowel play" This was followed by a sprinkling of odd A s delivered in my mailbox. Then it came to me. I won't replace the letter yet, I'll use it to have fun with my new students. We can all imagine and write about what happened to the missing letter. I set up a display area with ideas - the A could have gone to the Arctic, or on a tour of America. Could the A be hiding out in an Apartment? Maybe the A is on an adventure. He could be seeing some amazing action in Antarctica or the Amazon.

I'm working on replacing it with a color copy but first we've got to get a story going around about the this awol from the alphabet.