A's are A-a-ama-a-a-azing!
Beginning Reading
Rationale: Beginning readers need to be fluent in letter recognition and phoneme
awareness in order to be able to learn to read correctly and understand what
they are reading. This lesson is designed for children to understand the a=/a/
correspondence.
Materials that are needed for this lesson:
Elkonin Boxes for each child
Elkonin Box for the teacher
Picture of a baby crying
Individual baggies for each child containing letter for letter box lesson (a, t,
c, b, f, d, r, g, h, and m)
Dry erase board and marker
Words with the /a/ sound written on note cards
Procedure:
1.
Introduction: "Can anyone tell me what letter makes the /a/ sound? The /a/ sound
is made by the letter A! If you were to say the sound for a few seconds it kind
of sounds like a little baby crying. Do you hear that when I make the /a/
sound?" Model for the children the sound /a/ makes when it is drawn out.
2.Teach background knowledge: On a dry erase board write the letter A and make
the crying baby sound. Ask the children to do the same thing that you just did
and have them practice the sound while intimidating a crying baby. "Now I have a
tongue twister that I want you to learn because it will help you remember the
/a/ sound. Here it is: Ashley and her animal Adam ate apricots and sat under an
apple tree. Now let's all try it together! Aaaashley aaand her aaaanimal Aaaadam
ate aaaapricots aaand saaaat under aaan aaapple tree. Now you try it by
yourself! How many times did we hear the /a/ sound? 8 times!"
3.
"Now we are going to see if you can pick
the /a/ sound out of some words. I'm going to say two words and I want to see if
you can hear it." I will model for the children picking between ran or jog.
Raaaaan and jog. "I hear the /a/ sound in raaaan. Now it's your turn! Do you
hear /a/ in pet or pat, nap or net, tan or ten? Now that we can pick the /a/
sound out of words we are going to practice making words with the letter."
4. Have children get out their letter boxes and their baggies of letters.
I will do a letter box lesson including the words act, bag, ant, sat, hand, and
at. We will use the letters a, c, t, b, g, n, s, h, and d.
5. We will
then read "Cat Nap" which is a decodable book for the /a/ sound. "Cat Nap is a
book about a little orange kitten who decides to take a nap in his owners
backpack. When the cat is asleep his owner decides to leave his house with his
backpack. Do you think the cat will wake up? Do you think the owner will realize
the cat is in there?" As I am reading the book and pointing to the words the
children and I will sound out the words together and discuss the /a/ sound
further.
6.Assessment: For
each child I will give them a new /a/ word and have them read it. Some will be
actual words and some will be pseudo words.
References:
Murray, B.A., and Lesniak, T. (1999) "The Letterbox Lesson: A
hands-on approach for teaching decoding." The Reading Teacher, March
1999. pp. 644-650