D-d-do
you hear Dan’s drum?
Emergent
Literacy
Rationale: Children
must have an understanding of the
alphabetic principle in order to learn how to read and write. Since the
alphabetic principle is our primary goal for readers, we must first
take the
necessary steps to get them here. This includes learning about each
letter of
the alphabet and the phonemes which correspond to each one. In this
lesson, I will
be teaching the letter d and the
phonemic sound of d. Students will
learn how to write the letter d and
will practice recognizing the phoneme d in
written and spoken words by listening for the /d/ sound during a
reading
activity and by circling pictures that contain the /d/ sound.
Materials: Primary
writing paper and white paper for each
student; pencils; poster with tongue twister: “Dan dances
to the drum down the hall to dinner every day”; Emergent
Literacy assessment worksheet; word cards: dribble,
sad; Teacher copy of The Ugly
Duckling by: Hans Christian Andersen;
dry erase
board and marker.
Procedures:
1. Say: “Everyone
knows the alphabet right? a,b,c,d… We
learn how to say our ABC’s when we are little. It is important to
learn all about our ABC’s because it is made up of 26 letters that we
use
everyday to read and write. Just like it took us a while to learn our
ABC’s, it
also takes a while to learn each sound that every letter makes. Today
we are
going to take a look at the letter d and talk about the sounds it
makes, the
way our mouth moves when we say it and we will even be pointing out
pictures
that start with the letter d. Let’s get started!
2. Ask students: “Have you ever heard the sound of a drum?” Say: “When I say a word that has d in it, I think of someone beating a drumstick on a drum.” (tap pencil on table as a drumstick.) Say the word ‘dog.’ “When I say /d/ my tongue starts at the roof of my mouth behind my front teeth then drops down almost to my bottom teeth, making my jaw drop a little at the same time. Think of a drummer making the d sound with his drumsticks. He holds it up high then drops it down to make the sound in a movement kind of like the one our mouth makes when we say /d/.”
3. Try a tongue twister [on chart]. “Dan dances to the drum down the hall to dinner every day.” Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, drop your drumstick and stretch the /d/ at the beginning of the words. “/d/-/d/-dan /d/-/d/-dances to the /d/-drum /d/-down the hall to /d/-d inner every /d/-d ay.”
4. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil.] “Let’s use our drumstick [pencil] to spell /d/. Here we have three lines. The top one is the sky, the dotted middle line is the fence and the bottom line is ground. To write the lowercase d we start at the fence and drop down to the ground and quickly back around to the fence making a small circle that looks like a little drum. Now we will make a drumstick to go with the drum we just drew so start at the sky and drop straight down to the ground just barely striking your drum on the right side. [Model then practice once with students]. Now try it on your own. After I give you a check on your paper, I want you to write it nine more times. When you see the letter d all by its self in a word, that means that it stands for the /d/ sound.
5. Practice
finding d in the words dribble and
sad. Model how to find d in the word
dribble. “Take a good look at the word and
remember how we wrote the lower-case d. A
little drum then a drumstick. Not a drumstick then a little drum-that
would be
a different letter- b). Can someone point out the letter d in the word
dribble?
Call on student. Now listen for the
/d/- /d/-drum sound. /d/-/d/-/d/-dribble. Did you hear it? What about
the word
sad?”
6. Call on students to answer and explain how they knew: “Do you hear /d/ in wall or doll? Dark or light? Under or Over?”
7. Read The Ugly Duckling and talk about story. Reread and have students raise hand when they hear /d/ or recognize d in a word. Write words on dry erase board. Have students draw a picture about their favorite part of the story and write a sentence about it using invented spelling if time permits.
8. To assess the students, hand out the emergent literacy assessment worksheet and have them circle each picture whose names begin with /d/.
References
Reading Genie Website: Dr. Bruce Murray
http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/
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