Aaaaaaaaaa it's a mouse!
Phoneme Awareness Lesson
Rationale:
This lesson aims to teach children how to detect /a/ in spoken words and
reading. Students will be able to recognize short a by learning memorable
representations such as aaaa it's a mouse! This lesson will have children
practicing finding /a/ in words and identifying them in spoken words. Short
vowels are sometimes very hard for children to identify but with the correct
lessons and representations, students will feel comfortable identifying them in
spoken words and reading
Materials:
Primary paper and pencil
Poster with "Abby the alligator asked for an apple after smashing the alley cat"
Pat's Jam
(Educational Insight's)
Assessment worksheet
Word cards with BLACK, SAT, TAX, CAT MASK AND LACK
Procedures:
1.Introduce the lesson by telling students our language is a secret code,
sometimes it's very tricky to figure out what a letter is trying to say. We have
to look at the way our mouth moves as we say words. Today we are going to spot
how our mouths move when we say /a/. We spell /a/ with the letter a. /a/ sounds
like when you see a mouse and say aaaaaaa!
2.Let's pretend we just saw a mouse, aaaaaaaa, throw up your hands like your
scared. Notice that our mouth is open, and our tongue is barely hitting the back
of our bottom teeth.
3.Let me show you how I would check for /a/ in alligator. I'm checking for /a/
like I just saw a mouse. I do hear /a/ at the beginning in alligator. Let me
check Abby, there's the /a/ again at the beginning. Now, I'm going to check
frog. No aaaaaaa in frog. But I hear one at the beginning of Apple.
4.Let's try a tongue tickler (on poster). "Abby the alligator asked for an apple
after smashing the alley cat." Everybody say it together three times. Now say it
again, and this time, stretch the /a/ sound. Try it again, and this time break
it off the word. "/a/bby the /a/lligator /a/sked for an /a/pple /a/fter sm/a/shing
the /a/lley c/a/t.
5.(Have students take out primary writing paper and pencil.) We use letter A to
spell /a/. Capital A looks like a tee pee with a line in the middle. Let's write
the lower case letter a. Start at the sidewalk, go up the fence and back down to
the sidewalk to form a circle. Then start at the fence and make a line on the
side of the circle down to the sidewalk. I want to see everyone's a's. After I
give you a sticker, I want you to make 10 more just like it.
6.Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /a/ in apple or
orange? Ashley or Shelby? Fat or skinny? Cash or coins? Let's see if you can
spot the mouth open in some /a/ words. Make the aaaa sound when you hear the
/a/:
mask, mad, flash,
glad, sack, pan, brat, pack.
7.Read
Pat's Jam
and talk about the story. Read it again slowly and ask students to exaggerate
the /a/ sound when they hear it. We are going to play a game and see how many
/a/ sounds we can find.
8.Show BLACK and model how to decide if it is black or brown: The aaaa sound
tells me to open my mouth and throw up my hands like I just saw a mouse.
So this word is blaaaack. You try some: SAT: sit or sat? TAX: tix or tax?
CAT: cat or cut? MASK: musk or mask? LUCK: luck or lack?
9.For assessment, distribute the worksheet.
http://www.schoolexpress.com/fws/worksheet.php?id=64314.
Students will circle the picture that has the /a/ sound in it. Call students
individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #8.
References:
-Assessment worksheet:
http://www.schoolexpress.com/fws/worksheet.php?id=64314.
-Pat's
Jam. Educational Insights
-www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/