The Cat in the Hat
Emergent Literacy
Emergent Literacy
Rationale:
To learn to spell words,
children need the alphabetic insight that letters stand for phonemes and
spellings map out the phonemes in spoken words. Before students can
match letters to phonemes, they must recognize phonemes. Of all the
phonemes, short vowels are probably the toughest to identify. This
lesson will help students identify A=/a/, one of the short vowels.
They will learn to recognize /a/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful
representation and letter symbol, and then practice finding /a/ in words.
Materials:
A sentence strip with
ãAllie the Alligator sat on a mat eating apples.ä Written on
it, a box with a bat, hat, sock, jacket, picture of a cat, crayon, pear,
rat stuffed animal, and an apple; two poster boards with an apple tree
on each; 5 apples velcroed on each tree; two small baskets; Cat and the
Hat by Dr. Seuss; primary paper and pencils.
Procedures:
Introduce the lesson
by explaining that words are made up of individual sounds. When we
speak we say many different sounds. Each word has a different combination
of sounds. Today we are going to learn about the first letter in
the alphabet. Do you know what letter that is? The first letter
is ãaä. Have you ever heard a baby cry? A baby
cries like /a/? waaaaaaaa waaaaaa This is the sound that a short
ãaä makes. Lets pretend to be babies and cry like /a/.
I have a box with different items in it. When I pull out an item I will say the name of the item, when I call on you please tell me if you hear an /a/ sound in it. If you do make the sound a baby does when crying. If you do not hear an /a/ sound than I want you to be real quiet.
Everyone read the Cat in the Hat silently. After each student has finished ask for volunteers to reread the different parts of the book with a lot of /a/ words in it. For each word that they hear with an /a/ in it write on the board.
Read the book to students aloud. Every time I read a word with the short a sound clap your hands class.
Assessment:
Call children up to
the desk & review words from earlier lists individually. Ask
if they hear the /a/ sound.
Reference:
Murray,
Bruce and Lesniak, T. (1999). The Letterbox Lesson: A Hands-on
Approach to Teaching Decoding.
The Reading Teacher, 52, 644-650.
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