Monty the Moose
Emergent Literacy Design
Rationale:
This lesson will help children identify /m/, the phoneme represented by M.
Students will learn to recognize /m/ in
spoken words by learning a meaningful representation (and the letter symbol M,
practice finding /m/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /m/ in phonetic
cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.
Materials:
Primary paper and pencil; chart with "Milo’s monkey makes more money" drawing
paper and crayons; Dr. Seuss's ABC
(Random House, 1963); word cards with
MOUTH, MONKEY, MOUSE and
MOON; assessment worksheet
identifying pictures with /m/ (URL below).
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 are going to work on spotting the mouth move /m/. We spell /m/ with letter
M.
M looks like a Mountain, and
/m/ sounds like Mmmmm.
2. Let's pretend to rub our tummy,
/m/, /m/, /m/. Notice where your lips are? (Closed touching each other). When we
say /m/, we hum and do not release any air.
3. Let me show you how to find /m/ in the word
mummy. I am going to stretch
mummy out in super slow motion
and listen for my humming from rubbing by tummy. Mmm-uu-mmm-y.
There it was! I felt my lips touching. I can feel the humming sound /m/ in
mummy.
4. Let's try a tongue twister [on chart]. "Miss
Mouse munches on marvelous meatballs."
Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch
the /m/ at the
beginning of the words. "Mmmiss mmmouse mmmunches on mmmarvelous mmmeatballs."
Try it again, and this time break it off the word: "/m/ iss
/m/ ouse /m/ unches /m/ arvelous
/m/ eatballs.
5. Have students take out primary paper and pencil. We use letter
M to spell /m/. Capital M looks
like a Mountain. Let us write the lowercase letter m.
The letter m is made with a short line down, followed by two humps to the
right.
6. Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /m/ in
Mike or
Nike?
mind or
hand?
neck or
mouth?
Say: Let us see if you can spot the lips move together /m/ in some words.
Rub your tummy and see if you hear /m/:
The, mummy,
mommy, bug, flew, Mike, to, the, mountain, yummy.
7. Say: "Let's look at an alphabet book. Dr. Seuss tells us about a creature
whose name starts with M. Can
you guess?" Read page 30, drawing out /m/. Ask children if they can think of
other words with /m/. Ask them to make up a silly creature name like
Mighty-moose-mouse, or Mice-more-mountain. Then have each student write their
silly name with invented spelling and draw a picture of their silly creature.
Display their work.
8. Show Mom and model how to decide if it is
mom or
non: The
M tells me to rub my tummy,
/m/, so this word is mmm-omm,
mom. You try some: MIX: fix or
mix? MEET: feet or meet? MIND: find or mind?
9. For assessment, distribute the worksheet. Students are to complete the
spelling of M and m and color the pictures. Call students individually to read
the phonetic cue words from step #8.
Resources:
Lesson plan by Liz
Hooper-http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/odysseys/hooperel.html
Kids
zone worksheet for letter M-http://www.kidzone.ws/prek_wrksht/learning-letters/m.htm
Tongue
twister M-http://teachers.plainfield.k12.in.us/tcox/TongueTwistersbyletter.htm
Return to Caravans Index.
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/caravans.html