Cry Baby /a/ "Aaaaaaa!"
Beginning Reading
By: Jamie Storey
Rationale:
This lesson teaches children about the
/a/ correspondence, and how to read
/a/ by associating it with a crying baby. In this lesson
students will learn to recognize, spell, and read words with the
/a/ sound. They will
also be able to recognize
/a/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation
(a baby crying) and the letter symbol
A. Students will spell
and read words containing /a/
in a Letterbox lesson, along with reading a decodable book that
focuses on the
/a/ sound.
Materials:
1. Graphic image of a crying baby
2. Cover-up critter
3. Letter boxes
4. Primary paper
5. Letter tiles (a,t,h,m,p,d,r,g,c,l,s,s,f,b,n)
6. Chart paper with tongue twister written on it ("Andrew and Alice asked if
Annie's active animals were angry.")
7. White board and overhead/document cam
8. Worksheet (listed at the bottom of the page)
9. Books for each student (A Cat Nap)
10. List of spelling words on chart paper or whiteboard for the
students to read (lap, mat, Sam, gas, bank, glass, crab, splat)
Procedures:
1.
Say: "In order to become expert readers we need to learn the
code that tells us how to pronounce words. All letters make
different sounds as we move our mouths a certain way. Today,
we are going to learn about the /a/ sound. When I say
/a/, I think of a
baby crying, "Ahhhhhhh."
(Show sound picture card).
2.
Say: "The letter we are
going to learn about today is a." (Have
students take out primary paper and pencil). "Let's practice writing a on our primary paper." (Model
on the board how to write the letter
a). "Start at the fence line
and make a curved line down until you touch the sidewalk, but
don't stop here. Continue the curve around until you end up
where you started. Then draw a straight line back down, and
stop on the sidewalk." (As students practice drawing a row
of a's, walk around the room observing and checking if
they are correctly writing the letter a).
4. Say:
"Now I am going to
teach each of you a tongue tickler that will help you remember
the sound that /a/
makes." "Andrew and Alice asked if Annie's animals were
agitated." (I will briefly review what the word agitated means
before we say the tongue tickler together). "Let's say it
together! Now let's say it again, and if you hear the /a/ sound in a word, I
want you to raise your hand. (Repeat tongue twister). Now I want
each of you to stretch out the /a/
sound. (Ex: Aaaaaandrew aaaand Aaaaalice…) Good Job!"
5. (Have students take out their letterboxes and letters). Say: "We are going to use
what we just learned about the letter a to spell words.
I will call out a word and you can spell it using the
letterboxes. Before each word I call out I will tell you
how many boxes to use. Each sound or mouth move in the
word will go in a box. For example, the word
I am going to spell is
hat. I will use three boxes (draw three boxes on
the board),
because it has three
sounds. The
first sound I hear is /h/. I will place the letter h
in the first box (model on board). Now it might help to
say the word again to yourself, hat. The second sound I hear is
/a/. We just learned the letter a stands for /a/,
so I will place the a
in the second box (model on the board). The last sound I hear is
/t/. I will place the t in the third box (model
on board). I spelled the word hat. Now you try." The
words I will call out are: Lap, mat, Sam, gas (3)
bank, glass, crab (4), and splat (5). After the students
spell a word, the class will spell the word and I will write it on
the board. After writing the words on the board, the class will
read each word together.
6. Now, I will divide the students into partners. I
will give each partner a copy of the book, A Cat Nap. Say: This is a story
about a boy named
Paul who loved to play with his cat Maggie each
morning. One morning Maggie was not there, so Paul searched
everywhere for Maggie. He searched his house and even the
neighborhood. Where could Maggie have gone? Will he ever find
her? We must read to find out!
I will ask each partner to go back and forth reading a page
to each other. (Remind students if they are reading and get stuck,
that there are things they can do to help themselves). Say: "First, try to
read the word by covering parts of it up like I demonstrated for
you earlier. Then read the sentence all the way
through. Think about if the sentence makes sense. Then
change words that do not make sense. After you are finished
correcting, always make sure you reread the sentence one time
through with the corrections that you made. I will be
walking around to help you if you need it."
7. To end this lesson, I will read the story to the
students and we will discuss and talk about the story as we
read. The students will reflect on the story. For the
next lesson we will use this book by rereading a familiar text.
8. To assess the students they will each be given a worksheet
where they will be asked to circle the picture of the objects that
contain the
a=/a/ sound.
The students must say the name of each picture aloud, and
then circle the pictures in which they hear /a/.
References:
"Aaaaaaaaa!" The baby cried. By: Ashley Farrow
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/caravans/farrowbr.htm
"Aaaaaaa," Cries the Baby: Janie Colvin
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/doorways/colvinbr.htm
Book: A Cat Nap. Educational Insights, 1990.