Basic
Components of a Phoneme Awareness Lesson
The hummingbird is the
smallest bird.
It hovers by beating its wings 50-60 times a second. That makes a
humming sound. Gesture: Fingers as wings.
3. Make an alliterative "tongue tickler." Have students
stretch or split off your phoneme in the tickler.*
Example: Many mice make
music. Stretch it: Mmmany mmmice mmmake mmmusic.
4. Lead students to study the mouth move for your phoneme.
Consider using mirrors to see the mouth moves.
Example: L stands for /l/, the light
saber sound.
What's your mouth doing with /l/? Raise your light saber!
Cut /l/ in our twister: Lisa
lost the lizard's large lemon.
5. Provide a model
of how to find your phoneme in a spoken word.
Example: Let's see if
hummingbird /m/ is in pump.
I'll know it's there if my lips come together and
hum. P-p-p-uuu-mp.
P-uuummm . . . There, in the middle they came together
and I hummed. That was /m/! We do say /m/ in pump!
6. Add phoneme-finding practice by testing spoken words.*
Have students blend the new phoneme into words.
Example: Do you hear /m/
in Mom or Dad? In send or mail? In beef or ham?
I'll name some food. If they
have /m/ in them, go m-m-m. If they don't, say "yuck." Ham,
fish, lima beans, ice cream, cereal, chocolate cake,
marshmallows.
What am I saying: roo-m?
crea-m? sli-me?
What am I saying: m-oon?
m-ess?
7. Apply phoneme awareness in phonetic cue reading--decoding the
first letters of rhyming words.
Example: We use L to write the light saber
sound. Is this like
or bike? Light or fight? Land or band? Learn or burn?
* Minimal component of a barebones phoneme awareness lesson.