ABC Brainstorming is allowing students time to associate vocabulary or concepts in a lesson or unit. By providing or having students create a paper with all 26 letters, or you can group them as letter chunks like ABC, DEF, HIJ, etc, you give them time to write words or concepts that start with each letter.

Students may not be able to fill in an answer for every letter, but you can pair students or put them into small groups to help them complete their lists. This can be considered a think-pair-share style activity. Teachers can also see which vocabulary or concepts are consistently mentioned by the students and if there are any gaps in their understanding.

ABC Brainstorming can help teachers:

• Identify strengths and weaknesses across a class

• Can be used to monitor specific students for understanding

• Can be turned into a class opportunity for reflection

• ABC Races can be used to get groups to compete to complete an ABC Brainstorm, or you can use it as a classroom task to complete one before time runs out

• Use partial alphabet brainstorming sheets to get faster or more focused results

• Assign each student/group a section of the alphabet to brainstorm

• Randomly assign certain letters to individuals/groups

• Verbalise the task by having students speak out their responses