During the first few weeks of school, it can be a challenge to come up with a meaningful unit of study that will engage students beyond learning a bunch of routines. The new school year also holds the obvious imperative to build a classroom community while filling the empty bulletin boards with student work so the room feels more “lived in” and inviting. One way to accomplish all of the above is with this literacy unit devised by third grade teacher Alycia Zimmerman. 

Zimmerman had great success using the exercise below for her class’s first shared literacy experience. “Our names are an important part of our identity,” Zimmerman says, “and during the first few days of school, we are naturally focused on matching the names with the faces in our class. A name unit, then, is a natural extension of this focus. It emphasizes each student’s uniqueness and helps to reinforce our classroom values of acceptance and individuality.”

Begin With Thematic Read-Alouds

Zimmerman recommends starting the unit with read-alouds that are thematically linked to the importance of names. Picture books like the ones below can spark interesting discussions among students on themes of self-acceptance and cultural diversity. 

Picture Books About Names:

You can also stock up on baby name books for your students to explore individually or in small groups. They will be excited to pore over facts about the origins of names and popularity trends over time as they gear up for their own personal name research. 

Let's Research!

Invite your students to research their names in three different ways: by referring to the baby name books, by using online names databases, and by conducting a family interview. 

For online research, direct your students to a list of prescreened web resources with name origins, meanings, and popularity statistics. Your students can organize their research findings with this Name Research Organizer.

By interviewing their families at home, students will discover more insights on the significance of their names, why the names were chosen, and if they hold a personal or cultural meaning for their families.

The Writing Process

For the final writing exercise, have your students begin their writing with the opening sentence, “The most important thing about my name is . . . ” They should then add information about their names discovered during their research and family interviews. Finally, they should end with the most significant thing they learned: “But the important thing about my name is . . .”

Instruct your students to write their final piece on 6" x 9" lined paper. Then mount each student’s writing onto a larger piece of construction paper.

Stylize With Computer Graphics

This mini-computer lesson will help you informally assess your students’ basic word processing skills as they create name collages to decorate their writing assignment. 

Instruct your students to do the following on a computer:

• Open a new word processing document.
  
• Type their name and capitalize the first letter.
  
• Copy and paste the name at least twenty times.
  
• Change the fonts, colors, and sizes of the names (students love this part!).
  
• Print the document.
  

After your students print their name documents, they should cut out their stylized names and arrange them on the construction paper as a border for their writing assignment. Post all of them on a bulletin board in your classroom for students to admire and read for weeks to come.

Need more back-to-school ideas? Shop the best classroom supplies and materials below!