Pop Your Popcorn with P
Rationale:
This lesson will help children identify /p/, the phoneme represented by P.
Students
will learn to recognize /p/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful
representation (popcorn popping) and the letter symbol P, practice
finding /p/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /p/ in phonetic cue
reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.
Materials:
Primary paper and pencil; chart with "Peter
Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper.
"Penelope’s Picnic"; drawing paper and crayons;; word cards with PET,
PAY, PICKLE, PILL, PORK, and PIN, And Color
worksheet (per student).
Procedures:
1. Say: Our written language is a secret code. The tricky part is learning what
letters stand for--the mouth moves we make as we say words. Today we're going to
work on spotting the mouth move /p/. We spell /p/ with letter P. P
looks like a piece of un-popped popcorn, and /p/ sounds like popcorn being
popped.
2. Let's pretend we are popping popcorn, /p/, /p/, /p/. [Pantomime popcorn
popping] Notice where your lips are? (Touching each other). When we say /p/,
start with our lips together and we push air out of our mouth while parting our
lips.
3. Let me show you how to find /p/ in the word lamp. I'm going to stretch
lamp out in super slow motion and listen for my popcorn. Lll-a-a-mm-ppp.
Slower: Lll-a-a-a-mm-pppp There it was! I felt my lips come together and then
blow out air. I can feel the popcorn popping /p/ in lamp.
4. Let's try a tongue twister [on chart]. "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled
peppers." Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this
time, stretch the /p/ at the beginning of the words. " Pppppeter Ppppiper
ppppicked a pppeck of ppppickled pppeppers." Try it again, and this time break
it off the word: "/P/ eter /P/ iper /p/ icked a
/p/ eck of /p/ ickled /p/ eppers.
5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We use letter
P
to spell /p/. Capital P looks like a piece of popcorn. Let's write the lowercase
letter p. Start at the
fence, go straight down into the ditch, come up and put his chin on the
sidewalk.
I want to see everybody's p. After I put a smile on it, I want you to
make nine more just like it.
6. Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /p/ in pill
or mill? Plate or bowl? Pink or green? Color or
paint? Light or lamp? Say: Let's see if you can spot the mouth move
/p/ in some words. Pop your popcorn if you hear /p/: "The, pushy, person, left,
the, purple, pillows, beside, the, puffy, couch."
7. Say: "Now I’m going to read the book Penelope’s Picnic. This story is
about Penelope the pig and her friend Polly. They go down to visit the penguins
picnic. When the get there the penguins are gone playing games. So Penelope and
Polly decide to eat some of the penguins food. The food is so yummy that they
start eating a lot of it. Will the penguins be back in time to eat some of their
food? We are going to have to read the book to find out." "Ok, while I’m reading
this book I want you to listen for the /p/ sound we have been talking about all
class. Everytime you hear the /p/ sound I want you to make the popcorn popping
motion with your hands. [Teacher will read the story and students will make the
motion.]
8. Show PIG and model how to decide if it is pig or dig: The P
tells me to pop my popcorn, /p/, so this word is ppp-i-g, pig.
You try some: PET: pet or met? PAY: pay or lay? PICKLE: pickle or tickle? PORK:
fork or pork? PILL: mill or pill? PIN: win or pin?
9. For assessment, distribute the worksheet. Color in all the pictures that
start with /p/. Call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from
step #8.
Reference:
Murray, Bruce. Reading Genie: Hand Gestures for Phonemes
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/gestures.html
Lesson Reference: "Pop, Pop, Pop, Goes the Popcorn" by Susan Grimes-
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/projects/grimesel.html
Penelope’s Picnic:
http://www.bearcreations.net/kearney/letters/letter%20P/letterp.htm
Assessment worksheet:
http://www.tlsbooks.com/colorletterpanimals.pdf
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