Aaaaaaa! Let’s Ride the Roller Coaster
Emergent Literacy Design
Rationale: To learn
to read
and spell words, children need an understanding of the alphabetic
insight that
letters stand for phonemes and spellings map out the phonemes in spoken
words.
Before children can learn correspondences, they have to recognize
phonemes.
Short vowels are perhaps the toughest phonemes to recognize. This
lesson will
help students identify /a/ (short a).
The students will learn to recognize /a/ in spoken words by learning a
meaningful representation and a letter symbol. The students will then
practice
finding /a/ in words.
Materials:
·
Primary
paper and
pencil
·
Pictures(s)
of a
roller coaster (people’s arms and hands up in the air)
·
Chart
with “Abbie
and Adam asked if Amanda’s active animals were angry.”
·
Class
set of
cards with a on one side and a
question mark on the other
·
White
paper and
crayons
·
Picture
page of
illustrations: cab, cup, tub, sun, bell,
dice, hat, pig, jog, pot, face, and bed.
·
A Cat Nap
(Educational Insights)
Procedure:
1.
Introduce
the
lesson by saying, “Writing is a secret code.” Explain to the students
that the
complicated part to learning what letters represent is the mouth moves
that we
make as we say the words. Today we are going to be investigators. We
want to
find out what movement our mouth makes when we say the short a sound. At first /a/ will seem a little
hidden in words, but as you begin understanding it, you will be able to
uncover
/a/ in all types of words.
2.
Ask
students, “Did
you ever hear a screaming roller coaster rider say /a/?” That’s the
mouth move
we are looking for in our words today. Let’s pretend we are riding a
roller
coaster and say /a/. (Put your arms and hands up in the air). We put
our arms
and hands up in the air when we go down a big hill. Let’s ride the
roller
coaster: /a/.
3.
Let’s
try a
tongue twister (on chart). “Abbie and Adam asked if Amanda’s active
animals
were angry.” Everybody say it together with me. Now say it again, but
this
time, I want you to stretch the /a/ in each of the words: Aaabbie aaand
Aaadam
aaasked if Aaamanda’s aaactive aaanimals were aaangry.” We’re going to
try it
one more time. This time I want you to separate /a/ off the word:
“/a/bbie
/a/nd /a/dam /a/sked if /a/manda’s /a/ctive /a/nimals were /a/ngry.”
4.
(Have
students
take out primary paper and pencil). We can use the letter a
to spell /a/. Let’s practice writing! We don’t need to start at
the fence. We need to start under the fence. Go up and touch the fence,
then
around and touch the sidewalk, around and straight down. I’m going to
come by
and check everyone’s paper. After I put a sticker on your work, I want
you to
make ten more just like it. When you see the letter a
all by itself in a word, that’s the signal to put your arms and
hands up in the air and say /a/.
5.
Call
on students
to respond and tell how they knew: Do you hear /a/ in sad
or grumpy? Cab or truck? Face or toes? Black or white? Dad or mom?
Rag or towel? (Pass out a/? card to each student.) Say: Let’s see
if you
can spot the mouth move /a/ in some words. Show me a
if you hear /a/ and the question mark if you don’t. (Give words
one by one). “Abbie and Adam asked if Amanda’s active animals were
angry.”
6.
Read A Cat Nap, but explain to the students
that cats do not ride roller coasters. Tell them that the reason we are
using
this book is because the story uses words that have the /a/ sound. Talk
about
the story with the student. Read it again and have the students raise
their
arms and hands when they hear words with /a/. List their words on a
chart in
the front of the room, then have each student draw a roller coaster or
a cat
and write a message about it using invented spelling. Display their
work in the
classroom.
7.
For
assessment,
hand out the individual picture pages and help the students name each
picture.
Ask the student to draw a box around the pictures whose names have /a/.
References:
Adams,
Marilyn Jager. Learning to Read: Thinking and Learning about
Print.
A Summary prepared by: Steven A. Stahl, Jean Osborn, and Fran Lehr.
1990.
Wallach,
M. A., & Wallach, L. Wallach and Wallach’s Tongue Twisters. http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/twisters.html
Click here to return to Guidelines.