Izzie’s Igloo

Emergent Literacy

Trinity L. Dyess

Rationale:

Students must be phonemically aware to both read and write.  This means that the student must understand phonemes and the relationship between letters and sounds.  To help students become familiar with these rules, it is important that they are exposed to these activities inside the classroom.  In this lesson, we will work on the phoneme i=/i/.  Since vowels are the more difficult to get, this lesson will focus on this one phoneme.  During the lesson they will practice both reading and writing with the letter I. 

Materials:

Tin-Man Fix It

Primary paper
Mirrors per student

Pencils

Poster board with tongue twister: “Izzie’s Iguana lives In an Igloo!”
Name sticks with each individual students name on one

Procedures:

• Start with an introduction to the lesson.  Today, we are going to work on the sound /i/. This will be explained by saying that every different letter has a different mouth movement.  I will ask the students to show me how their mouths are when saying the letter i.  We are going to listen for /i/ in words, read /i/ in words, and write using the letter I.   So that the students develop their own idea of what their mouth looks like while they are saying the letter i they will each be given a mirror and look at their mouth saying the letter by itself and when it is used in saying different words. 
  

• Now, I am going to introduce our hand movements.  I will ask the students if they have ever had something sticky on their hands and tried to shake it off.  I know I have, and when I do, I shake them trying to get the icky sticky stuff off.  So, every time we hear the sounnd /i/, we will shake our hands, trying to get the icky sticky off.

• Now we are going to learn our new tongue twister.  Display poster with the tongue twister “Izzie’s Iguana lives in an Igloo.”  Now, every time we hear the sounnd /i/, we are going to drag it out and shake our icky sticky hands.  Ex.  Iiiiizzie’s Iiiiiiguana lives iiiiiin an iiiiiigloo.  We will repeat the tongue twister several times. 

• Now we are going to get out both our pencils and papers.  Great.  We are now going to practice writing the sound that we hear!  To draw the letter i, we are going to start at the middle and draw a straight line down, until it reaches the bottom, then you will come back up and put a dot above the line.  We are going to practice doing this several times.   

• Now I am going to get out my name sticks, and when I call your name I want  you to tell me which word contains the /i/ sound?  Examples: want or wit, mitt or matt, would or will.  We will continue this until everyone has participated. 

• I am now going to read the students a story about a Tin-Man.  Tin-Man, accidentally gets hurt by Sid, a big kid.  Let’s finish the story and see if the tin-man can be fixed.  After we finish reading the story, we will list some of the /i/ words that we remember on the board. 

• As an assessment, I will ask the students to listen for the /i/ sound in several different words.  When they hear it, they will tell me which word it is in.  For example do you hear /i/ in igloo or bear. (Igloo.)
  

References:

Murray, B. "Reading Genie: Perspectives." Research-Based Lessons Designed by Preservice Teachers. 2006. 26 Feb 2007 <http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/perspectives.html>.
Pro-Teacher "Phonemic Awareness"  http://www.proteacher.com/070010.shtml

Beck, Isabel. Making Sense of Phonics: The Hows and Whys.

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