Aaaa! The
Baby is Crying!
Emergent
Literacy
Cortney Winton
Rationale:
It is extremely significant for students to understand the correlation
between
graphemes and phonemes when they are trying to learn to read and
write. Phonemes in verbal word contexts must be distinguished
before
students can learn to match the letters to the phonemes. Because short
vowels
can be spelled or enunciated in numerous and diverse ways, they are
more
difficult to learn than the long vowels are. In this lesson we will
focus on
working to recognize the phoneme /a/ in its oral and written form.
Materials:
Primary paper, pencils, dry erase board, marker, index cards, handout
with
pictures of words that have the /a/ sound in them.
Procedure:
1. Begin the lesson by telling the students that they can recognize the
letter
a by understanding how the mouth moves when the sound is made.
For
instance: We are going to start with the letter a. We are particularly
going to
focus on short a. Sometimes it can be a little hard to figure out, but
I think
we will all do great! Now, let's say a = /a/. Repeat after me, please;
a = /a/.
2. Ask the students: Do any of you have a little baby brother or
sister? Do
they cry a lot? Does your mom shout out, "The baby is crying,"? Well,
when
babies cry, what kind of sound do you think that they make? (/a/) Can
everyone
say it together? That is the sound that a short a
makes. Today we are
going to try to see if we can hear that sound in any of the words that
we talk
about.
3. I am going to read a sentence to you two times. Then I will write it
on the
board. Just listen to it the first time that I read it. When I
read it the
second time though, listen carefully to see if you can hear the /a/
sound. Ashley's apple is in the grass around black ants. Now
I want
you all to repeat that sentence.
4. Does anyone remember what letter makes the /a/ sound? (Pass
out paper
and pencil) We can now practice writing that /a/ letter.
First,
let's start just a little below the fence and circle around towards the
window.
Now let's go to the sidewalk on your paper and then back to where you
started. Now draw a straight line down on the side of the circle
closest
to the door. Let's practice writing the letter a eight times and
then circle
your best one.
5. Pass out an index card to each student. Have them write the
letter a on
one side of it, and an X on the other side. I am going to call
out a list
of words one by one. If you think that you can hear the /a/ sound that
the
letter a makes, hold your card up with the a side toward me. If
you do not
think that you hear the /a/ sound, hold the X side of the card toward
me.
Word List: bat, sit, tap, cot, lit, ham.
6. Introduce the story Pen Pals to the students by telling them a
little bit about
the characters and the problem that the characters run into. Next, read
the
story to them, slowly and carefully dragging out the /a/ sounds in the
words. After
you have finished the story, go back through it and find the words that
have
the letter a in them with the /a/ sound.
7. Assessment: Give out a handout that has pictures and the names of
the items
in the pictures on it. Some of the words will have the /a/ sound in
them and
some will not. Review the name of each picture with the students.
Ask them
to circle the pictures that have the /a/ sound in them.
Reference:
- Assessment: J. Lloyd Eldredge (1995).
- Teaching Decoding in Holistic Classrooms:
Developing
Phonemic Awareness Through Stories, Games, and Songs; 50-70.