The idea for this project developed from a need for a way to help my first graders review the names and sounds of the letters of the alphabet in a meaningful way, and to provide meaningful associations for those students having difficulty holding this letter/sound knowledge. A new camera and the Morris farm next door to our school merged into an idea for a photo illustrated alphabet book about the farm. Having never created a web site before the children and I chose to make our audience the world!

The children and I made several visits to the farm to find and photograph concepts for each letter of the alphabet. There was a lot of discussion and brainstorming as we chose just the right shot for each letter. We spent time reading about the Internet and exploring other sites to get a feel for the many possible formats to present our work. The children worked on and shared Home Alphabet associations to get a clearer vision of how an ABC book would go together.

We drafted rough and final drafts of text for each letter, problem solved the page numbers, decided who to dedicate our work to, and put many of our newly developed reading and math skills into practice. The students continued their work with a rubric to self assess their final drafts after reviewing and discussing examples of work depicting a range of quality.

Our Computer Lab Director, Deborah Barrows, taught us how to scan photographs and guided us through beginning keyboard skills and the development of web pages for each letter.

This learning process met or exceeded twenty performance indicators of the Maine Learning Results for grades K-2 in all curricular areas with the exception of Health and Physical Education and Foreign Languages. It also addresses many of our local technology requirements for all First graders. Hopefully the feedback and comments about their work will create great feelings of accomplishment as well as a better concept of geography as we map responses.