“Aaaaaaa,” Cries the Baby
A Beginning Reading Lesson
By Janie Colvin
Rationale:
This lesson teaches children about the
/a/ correspondence, and how to read
/a/ by associating it with a crying baby.
Students will learn 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:
Graphic image of a crying baby, cover-up critter, letter boxes, primary paper,
letter tiles (a,t,h,m,p,d,r,g,c,l,s,s,f,b,n), poster with tongue twister written
on it ("Andrew
and Alice asked if Annie's animals were agitated."),
white board, overhead/document cam, worksheet (listed at the bottom of the
page), books for each student (A Cat Nap),
and a list of spelling words on a poster 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
class, we are going to learn about the /a/
sound. When I say /a/, I think of a
baby crying, "Ahhhhhhh." (Show
graphic image).
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).
3. Say: "Before we learn about the spelling of /a/,
we need to listen for it in some words. When I say /a/
in words, my mouth opens and lengthens, and my mouth looks like a baby's mouth
when he/she cries. (Make vocal gesture for /a/.)
I'll show you first: class. I heard
/a/ and I felt my mouth open and
lengthen (make a circle motion around lips). Now I'm going to see if I hear
/a/ in school. Hmm, I didn't hear
/a/ in school, and my mouth didn't
open and lengthen. "That's not it." Do you hear
/a/ in head, made, snow, rain, coat,
bag, stamp, or lips?" (Have students make a circle motion around their lips when
they feel their mouths make the /a/
movement).
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. 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!! The Crying Baby.
By: Hannah Bailey
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/invitations/baileybr.htm
Book: A Cat Nap. Educational Insights, 1990.
Worksheet-
http://www.phonicsworld.com/shortvowela1.html