“B, b, Bouncing
Balls and Baseball Bats”
Emergent
Literacy
Rationale:
This lesson will help children recognize and identify the
phoneme /b/ represented by the letter B. It will also help
children associate the phoneme /b/ with the letter B. This
lesson will help children remember what sound /b/ makes by using
something to help their memory (“b,b,b,bounce” ). The baseball
bat and baseball will help the child remember how to write the
letter /b/ and not get it confused with /d/. This lesson will
help with phoneme awareness. This will also give them practice
with finding /b/ words. Students will get a better understanding
of the correspondence by focusing on the mouth movement with the
sound.
Materials: Primary
paper
Pencil
Tongue tickler with picture: (Bill and Betty
baked brown bread for Barbara's baby.)
The Butter Battle
Book by Dr. Seuss
Word cards with words BAM, BOOK, LAD, DAY, BUG, MAP
Worksheet (assessment)
Introduction: 1. Words we write are really cool because they are
like a secret code, but sometimes they can be tricky because we
have to learn what the letters stand for. Letters tell us how to
move our mouths and what sounds to make. We will be working on
learning how to move our mouth to say the letter /b/. We spell
/b/ with the letter B. (After I say that I will show them my
picture card for the sound /b/.) B looks like two basketballs on
top of each other, and /b/ looks like a baseball bat beside a
baseball. What do you do to a basketball? What sound does a
basketball make when it hits the floor? B,b,b,b,…. bounce!
2. Let’s pretend to bounce our basketball. Bounce, bounce,
bounce. Okay, every time you say bounce notice where your lips
are. First, they are closed together tightly. Then we push out
the air in our mouth with strong force.
3. I am going to find the /b/ in the word
bad. I am going to say bad really slow so that I can hear the b,b,bounce.
Bbbb-aaa-ddd. I’m going to say it one more time even slower
bbb-aaa-ddd. I found it! I found it because I felt my lips close
really tightly then push out the air really hard. I heard my
basketball bouncing too.
4. Now we are going to try this tongue tickler to hear our sound
in other fun words. Bill
and Betty baked brown bread for Barbara's baby. Let’s
repeat it three times, whenever you hear our /b/ sound pretend
like you are bouncing a basketball. Now let’s do it again except
for this time when you hear our /b/ sound stretch out the sound
to make it sound like this. Bbbilly and Bbbetty bbbbaked bbrown bbbread for
Bbbarbbara’s bbabbby. One more time, but this time let’s
separate the /b/ from the rest of the word.
/B/illy and /B/etty
/b/aked /b/rown /b/read for /B/ar/b/ara’s /b/a/b/y.
5. (Have students take out their primary paper and pencil.) We
are going to use
B to spell /b/.
Capital
B looks like two
basketballs sitting on top of each other. Let’s write a capital
B. Start at the roof
and draw a straight line down to the sidewalk. Then bring your
pencil back to the roof and make a hump from the roof to the
fence and make another hump from the fence to the sidewalk.
Lowercase b looks
like a baseball bat with a baseball lying right beside it. Let’s
write a lowercase
b. Start at the roof
and draw a straight line down to the sidewalk. Then put your
pencil on the fence and draw a hump down to the sidewalk. After
I check your work draw five more capital
Bs and lowercase
bs.
6. Activity. Call on students to have them decide which word
they hear /b/ in. (bug or
fly? Brick or house? Beat or lose?) Now everyone pretend
to bounce your basketball if you hear the /b/ sound in these
words:
beg, shake, bunk, bag,
toy, face, back, cow.
7. Practice with a text. Let’s read The Butter Battle Book
by Dr. Seuss. The Yooks and the Zooks disagree on which side of
the bread butter should be on. This disagreement leads them into
a competition. Let’s read to see who out does the other one.
While reading if you hear a word that starts with /b/ pretend to
bounce your basketball. Then ask the students if they can come
up with any other words that start with /b/. Let the students
choose a word (different from one in the text) to draw a picture
of and have them spell their word below their picture (invented
spelling).
8. Let’s practice reading our new letter /b/. Model how to
decide whether the word starts with /b/ or not. Example: Which
word starts with /b/,
bug or mug? Bug
starts with /b/ because the B tells me to bounce my ball. It also tells me to
put my lips together and push the air out really hard. Here are
some for you to try: brick
or kick? Bake
or make? Plank or blank? Bang or sang?
9. Assessment. Worksheet. Have the students color the pictures
that start with the letter b. http://www.tlsbooks.com/letterb_1.pdf
References
Holcomb, Joanna, Bouncing the Ball with B.
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/doorways/holcombel.htm
Assessment worksheet:
http://www.tlsbooks.com/letterb_1.pdf