Aaa!
It’s a Rat!!
Beginning Reading
Eleanor McDavid
Rationale:
To teach children to learn phoneme awareness, they learn to read by
learning specific correspondences. Through practice with specific
correspondences, students understand that the phoneme matches with a
specific grapheme and then they can apply that knowledge to practice
spelling words with a small number of phonemes. Vowels are crucial in
learning to read because they are found in every word. In this lesson,
students will get useful practice with the phoneme /a/ through practice
pronouncing the phoneme in isolation, practice identifying the /a/
phoneme in spoken words, practice applying their knowledge about the
/a/ phoneme when spelling words with letterbox squares, and practice
reading decodable text.
Materials:
Picture
of a scary rat http://images.buycostumes.com/mgen/merchandiser/17956.jpg?is=325,325,0xffffff
Card with the phrase, “The rat crashed into the
trash and went splat!”
Card with the letter Aa
Primary writing paper and pencil
Copy of Lad and the Fat Cat
Letterbox Squares (Elkonin Boxes)
Letter tiles: A,B,C,D,G,K,L,M,N,P,R,S, and T
Cards with the words: cat, crab, sand, bank, lamp,
grass, blank, plant, blast
Worksheets
that contain pictures of common words with the /a/ phoneme with the
corresponding empty letterbox squares beneath it.
Procedure:
- The teacher will begin the lesson by
introducing the phoneme sound /a/. Also by asking, “Have any of you
seen a scary rat before? If so, did you yell out of fright? (If not,
maybe your mom or sister did). Well, today the phoneme that we are
going to be working on makes the sound of the scream a person makes
when they see something scary like a rat. “Aaa.” Here is a picture of
the scary rat to help you remember through out the lesson the /a/
phoneme.” It might also help the students for the teacher to describe
the mouth movements it takes to pronounce the phoneme. The teacher
could say, “Watch my mouth as I make the /a/ phoneme. My jaw and tongue
are down. Now I want you to try.”
- Here the teacher should introduce the letter Aa
to the students. He/she should hang a picture of the letter Aa or write
it on the board while also explain this letter makes the “Aaa” yell. By
showing the students the corresponding grapheme to their phoneme they
will make a stronger connection with it.
- The students can now begin to practice the /a/
phoneme by practicing the “Aaa” sound when they go over a tongue
twister that has many examples of words with the /a/ phoneme in it. The
teacher should say the phrase, “Andrew and Alice asked if Annie's
active animals were angry.” to the students and explain to them that
they should repeat after him/her. After the students say it at normal
speed, the teacher should ask the students which words they hear the
/a/ phoneme. They should respond with “rat,” “crashed,” “trash,” and
“splat.” Now the teacher should ask the students to say the phrase
again but emphasizing the /a/ phoneme in “rat,” “crashed,” “trash,” and
“splat.”
- Now it would be a good time for the teacher to
have the students practicing writing the grapheme Aa on their own. The
teacher should have the students pull out primary writing paper and a
pencil and observe the teacher model how to write it. The teacher
should be in front of the students and while writing the letter, she
should be saying the steps it takes to write it. He/she could say,
“Start at the rooftop, go down the slide to the sidewalk, then down the
slide the other way, and cross at the fence.” After modeling how to
write the letter Aa, the students should practice on their own. Some
students might need some extra scaffolding and the teacher should walk
around the room and check on the progress of the students.
- The students should have a chance to try to
distinguish the /a/ phoneme in spoken word to help develop phoneme
awareness. The teacher could ask the students if they hear the /a/
phoneme in one of the two words he/she is comparing. For example, the
teacher could say: “Do you hear the /a/ sound in cat or dog?”, “Do you
hear the /a/ sound in sand or beach?”, “Do you hear the /a/ sound in
crab or fish?”, “Do you hear the /a/ sound in bank or house?”, and “Do
you hear the /a/ sound in plant or flower?”
- The students should now take their practice
with the phoneme and grapheme and apply it to spelling some 3-6 phoneme
words. The teacher should introduce this by telling the students that
they are going to be working with the letterboxes and letter tile to
spell out some words. As the teacher provides letterboxes and letter
tiles for the students, he/she should have a list of words ready for
the students to spell that have the phoneme /a/ in it. Some good
examples of words are: cat (3 phoneme word); crab, sand, bank, lamp,
grass (4 phoneme words); blank, plant, blast (5 phoneme words.) As each
child goes through the words, the teacher is going to have to scaffold
if they struggle. A good method to help scaffold, would be to use the
body-coda method. For example, the teacher could talk the students
through it by saying, “First let’s start with the word cat. When we say
it we want to stretch it out into all of its sounds. Ccc-aaa-ttt. We
here three separate sounds that have to be represented in the three
letterboxes. By using the body-coda method, we can figure this out
really easy. First lets this of the vowel we hear /a/. The /a/ phoneme
is represented with a letter ‘a’. Let’s put that letter in the middle
box. Now let’s say the word again sounding it out from the beginning.
Ccc-aaa-ttt. Ccc-aaa. I think the first letter is a ‘C’ because of the
Ccc phoneme. Let’s put a ‘c’ in the first box. Now let’s figure out
that last phoneme. Let’s say the word again, Ccc-aaa-ttt. The ttt
phoneme is represented by a ‘t’ and all together we just spelled out
Cat!” After the words are spelled, the teacher could have the words
written on cards and have the students read the words they just
spelled. The teacher should tell his/her students, “When we read words
and we need to sound them out, the body-coda method works really well
too! First we cover up all the letters but that vowel, and we sound it
out, then we move on to the first letter and we sound out the first
letter and the vowel sound together. Lastly we uncover the rest of the
word and we read it all together!”
- Now is a good time for the students to take
time to apply their practice to reading a decodable text. Lad and
the Fat Cat by Geri Murray is a good example of a decodable text
featuring the /a/ phoneme. By having the students read the text they
are practicing applying the practice they just had with many examples
throughout the text using the /a/ phoneme. The teacher should introduce
the book by giving a short book talk to get the students interested in
reading the book. A good example for a book talk for Lad and the
Fat Cat would be, “Lad is very upset with Scat the cat because she
is lying in his bed and will not move because she is too fat. Will Lad
be able to convince or scare Scat away from his mat so he can lie down?
To find out you have to read Lad and the Fat Cat.” As the
children are reading, the teacher could walk around the room and have
some of the student whisper read to them so they could mark some
miscues for a good idea how well the students are grasping the
correspondence. After the students read the book the teacher could ask
the class if they could name any of the words in the book that have the
/a/ phoneme. As the students respond the teacher could write the words
that they recognized on the board.
- For assessment, the students could be tested by
having a worksheet that helps them practice more with their spellings
of words with the /a/ phoneme. The worksheet will have pictures of
common words with the /a/ phoneme and below each picture will be blank
letterbox squares that correspond with the picture. The student will
attempt to fill in as many letterbox spellings as he/she can.
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References:
Slocum, Laura. “Ahhhhhhh! Stop the
Crying Baby.”
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/constr/slocumbr.html
Hummer, Melanie. “Mouth Moves and Gestures for
Phonemes.”
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/mouthmoves.html
Murray, Geri. Lad and the Fat Cat. http://www.auburn.edu/%7Emurrag1/bookindex.html
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Images of rat http://images.buycostumes.com/mgen/merchandiser/17956.jpg?is=325,325,0xffffff
