Russian Alphabet Soup Lesson Plan Template
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1
2
3Lesson Plan: Russian Alphabet Soup!
CURRICULUM FOCUS:
Russian Language, World Culture
GRADE LEVEL:
7-12
Overview
The modern Russian alphabet is a variant of the cyrillic alphabet and contains 33 letters. To non-native speakers, it may
look intimidating, but it’s actually quite easy to learn! In this activity, students will compare Russian and English letters
and their sounds. They will then use this knowledge to fill out a worksheet identifying American geographical locations
by their Russian language cognates.
Objectives
Materials
Student will be able to:
All materials are inclusive in this lesson plan.
• Identify all 33 letters of
Activities
the Russian alphabet;
• Pronounce 33 letters of
Begin by giving an overview of the Russian alphabet (provided on page 2). Show
the Russian alphabet;
students the chart of the Russian alphabet and its equivalent English letters and
• Use the Russian alphabet
sounds. Sound out all 33 letters of the alphabet together. Explain what “cognates”
to spell out American
are and give examples (from attached worksheet). Ask students to fill in worksheet
geographical locations.
using the Russian alphabet chart as a key.
Adaptations
Vocabulary
This lesson can be used for
younger grades as well,
Cyrilic: Adjective describing the alphabet used by a number of Slavic languages
although the teacher will
(examples: Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian) and some non-Slavic languages of Central
need to be more active
Asia (example: Tajik).
about helping with the
spelling of American
Cognate: In linguistics, cognates are two words that have a common etymologi-
geographical places.
cal origin, meaning they share roots (“night” in English and “nuit” in French, for
example). A cognate can also mean a word, that while spelled differently, sounds
Useful Resources
and means the same as a word in another language. For example, the Russian
word “Америка” means the same and is pronounced the same as the English word
Comic Strip: Learn to Read
“America.”
Russian
Evaluation
in 15 Minutes, by Peter Starr
Northrop and Eric Estrada
Assessment of the student’s capability of identifying Russian alphabet letters will
be determined by how many answers they get correct on the attached worksheet.
Worksheet Answer Key: 1. Kansas; 2. Washington; 3. Montana; 4. Kentucky;
post/97607943779/learn-to-
5. Kansas City; 6. Boston; 7. Cincinnati; 8. Chicago; 9. Arkansa; 10. Nebraska;
read-russian-in-15-minutes-
11. San Francisco; 12. Los Angeles; 13. Utah; 14. Philadelphia; 15. California;
i-did-this
16. Missouri; 17. New York; 18. Michigan; 19. Colorado; 20. Mississippi.
KU CREES
University of Kansas
LESSON PLAN
Center for Russian, East European, & Eurasian Studies
by Adrienne Landry, CREES Outreach Coordinator
alandry@ku.edu
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