Win the Pangram Competition

What You Need:

• Paper
• Pen
• Construction paper or poster board
• Markers
• Thesaurs and/or dictionary

What You Do:

1. Write down the following example of a common pangram: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
2. Explain that a pangram uses all of the letters in the English language in a single sentence. At this point, the kids might underestimate how difficult writing a pangram can be. They’ll find out soon!
3. Challenge the kids to write their own pangrams and to compete to see who can write the shortest pangram that makes sense. Individual kids can work on their own, but if you have a larger group of kids, try having them work in pairs.
4. Help kids as they get stuck. For example, they may not be sure which words they can add to their pangram in order to incorporate some of the less common letters of the alphabet.
5. Award the kid whose pangram has the fewest letters, the kid whose pangram has the fewest words, and the kid whose pangram makes the most logical sense.
6. The kids can make pangram posters using construction paper or poster board and markers. To do this, they should write their pangram in black marker along the bottom of the poster, and then illustrate the pangram on the rest of the poster board.