“Uu, uu, u” Says my muscles!
Emergent Literacy
Rationale:
This lesson will help students identify /u/, the phoneme represented by
U. Students will learn to recognize /u/ in spoken words by learning a
meaningful representation (curling arms) and the letter symbol U,
practice finding /u/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /u/ in phonetic
cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.
Materials: Primary paper and pencil; picture chart with embedded letter and
tongue tickler: "Uncle was upset because he was unable to put his umbrella up.";
drawing paper and crayons; Dr. Seuss's Hop on Pop (Random House, 1974);
word cards with CUP, PUP, FUN, RUN, LUCK, and
MUCK; assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /u/ (URL link
below).
Procedures:
1. Say: Words we write are like a secret code. The tricky part is learning what
letters stand for. They tell us to move our mouth a certain way to say words.
Today we're going to work on spotting the mouth move /u/.
We spell /u/ with the letter U. [show picture-sound card]. U
looks like the weights that someone uses to work out, and /u/ sounds like what
you say when you lift them: /u/…/u/, /u/!
2. Let's pretend to lift those weights,
/u/, /u/, /u/. [Pantomime lifting weights by curling arms in an upward
position.] Notice where your lips are? (wide open). When we say /u/, we let our
mouth open with lips apart and let the air come out of our mouths.
3. Let me show you how to find /u/ in the word pluck.
I'm going to stretch pluck out very slowly and listen for /u/. . .
/u/. Ppp-ll-uuuu-ckk.
Slower: P-l-uuu-c-k. There it was! I felt my lips apart and air being
pushed out. I can hear myself say /u/ in pluck.
4. Let's try a tongue tickler [on
chart]. "Uncle was upset because he was unable to put his umbrella up."
Everybody say it three times together and curl your arms up each time you hear
/u/. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /u/ at the beginning of the
words as I point to them. “Uuuncle was uuupset because he was uuunable to put
his uuumbrella uuup." Try it again, and this time break it off the word: “/U/ncle
was /u/pset because he was /u/nable to put his /u/mbrella
/u/p.”
5. [Have students take out primary
paper and pencil]. We use letter U to spell /u/. Capital U looks
like arm curls but lowercase u looks like the end of a weight. Let's
write the upper case letter U. Start at the fence, draw a line down to
the sidewalk, then curve back up to the fence. After I put a happy face on your
paper, I want you to make five more just like it.
6. Call on students to answer and
tell how they knew: Do you hear /u/ in bug or bag ?
Stuck or stack? Cross or crush?
Stump or stomp? Gruff or grow? Say: Let's see if you can spot the mouth
move /u/ in some words. Curl your arms when you hear /u/: cow, bug, horse,
umbrella, farm, slug, unhappy, scrunch.
7. Say: "Let's look at a book,
Hop on Pop. Dr. Seuss tells us about a dog. Can you guess what the dog is
doing?“ (show picture). Read page
3-5, drawing out /u/. Tell children
to curl their arms whenever they hear /u/.
Ask them what words they heard that had the /u/ sound. Then have each
student write their word with invented spelling and draw a picture of it.
Display their work.
8. Show CUP and model how to decide
if it is cup or cop: The U tells me to curl my arms and put
my lips apart, /u/, so this word is c-uuu-p, cup.
You try some: FUN: fun or fan? RUN: run or ran? PUP: pap or pup? LUCK:
luck or lack? MUCK: mock or muck?
9. For assessment, distribute the
worksheet. Students are to match unhappy faces to objects that start with /u/
and color the pictures that begin with U. Call students individually to
read the phonetic cue words from step #8.
http://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/vowels/u-begins1.htm
References:
Bruce Murray, Brush your Teeth with F
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/sightings/murrayel.html
Bruce Murray, Wallach and Wallach's Tongue Ticklers
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/ticklers.html
Assessment Worksheet:
http://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/vowels/u-begins1.htm
Dr. Seuss, Hop on Pop. 1963