Blowing Bubbles with
B
By:
Rationale:
This lesson will help children identify /b/, the phoneme represented by
B. Students will learn to recognize
/b/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation (pretending to blow
bubbles under water) and the letter symbol
B, practice finding /b/ in words, and
apply phoneme awareness with /b/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing
rhyming words from beginning letters.
Materials:
Primary paper and pencils; chart with "Blake the baker bakes black bread"; word
cards with BIG, BOX, FEET, BALL, MOST, and BIKE; picture of a fish blowing
bubbles; poem using the /b/ sound and assessment worksheet (URLs below).
Procedures:
1. Say: Our written language is a secret code. The way to discover the code is
to figure out what letters stand for - the way we move our mouths when we say
words. Today we are going to work on how to say /b/.
We spell /b/ with letter B and
it sounds like blowing bubbles under water.
2. Let’s pretend to blow bubbles, /b/,/b/,/b/. (Act out blowing bubbles while
emphasizing the /b/ sound). Notice where your lips are (point to lips), they are
lightly smacking against each other. When we say /b/ our lips touch and then
reopen again to make the sound.
3. Let me show you how to find /b/ in the word
crab.
I will say the word super slowly and stretch out all the letters so you
can listen for the bubble blowing. Cc-rr-aa-b. Slower: Ccc-rrr-aaa-bbbb. Did you
hear that at the end? I was blowing my bubbles with my lips smacking against
each other. I can feel the /b/ in crab.
4. Let’s try a tongue twister [on chart]. "Blake the baker bakes black bread."
Everybody say it three times slowly together. Now this time stretch the /b/ out
at the beginning of every word. "Bbbblake the bbbaker bbbakes bbblack bbbbread."
Try it again and break the /b/ off at the beginning of each word. "/b/ lake the
/b/aker /b/akes /b/lack /b/read."
5. (Instruct students to take out the primary paper and pencil). We use
B to spell /b/. Look at your lines on
your paper as a rooftop (top line), fence (dashed line), and sidewalk (bottom
line). We can start by practicing the
upper case B, draw your line on the
left from rooftop to sidewalk. Next, connect starting at the rooftop and draw a
half circle to the fence that ends in the middle of the line. Do the same from
the fence to the sidewalk by drawing another half circle. Let’s now practice
writing the lowercase b, draw your
line from rooftop to sidewalk again but this time just draw on half circle
connecting at the middle of the line on the fence and going to the bottom at the
sidewalk. I want to see everyone’s
lowercase and uppercase b’s. Once I
check them off I want you to draw four more lowercase
b’s and four more uppercase
B’s.
6. Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /b/ in
play or
bug?
Blue or
yellow?
Cub or
let?
Globe or
stove? Let’s see if you can spot your
mouth moving to /b/ in some words. Blow bubbles if you hear /b/.
The, burly, beaver, built, his, dam, out,
of, big, brown, logs.
7. Pass out poems to every student. Say: I’m going to read you a poem about a
bird. Every time you hear the /b/ sound I want you to clap. I’m going to read it
slower the second time and I want you to write the blowing bubbles /b/ words on
your paper. (The words they need to write down are
Bonnie, blue, bird, bye, birdie).
Since the words are right in front of the students invented spelling is not
going to be a huge issue.
8. Show BIG and model how to decide if it is
big or
dig: The
B tells me to blow my bubbles, /b/,
bbbig, big. You try some: BOX:
box or
fox? FEET:
meet or
feet? BALL:
ball or
tall? MOST:
post or
most? BIKE:
bike or
hike?
9. For assessment, the students will do the worksheet that has been distributed
to them. Students are to draw a line from the each butterfly to the words that
begin with /b/. Call students individually to read the phonetic cues from step
#8.
Reference: Murray, Geri. CTRD 3710 ExampleELDesign (2011).
Blackboard Learning System
Fall 2008, Murray, Bruce.
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/sightings/murrayel.html
Poem:
http://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/b-poem.htm
Assessment:
http://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/b-begins1.htm