"Nice and Neat Mickey Mouse"

Emergent Literacy
Sarah Sullivan
sulliss@auburn.edu

Rationale: One of the greatest factors in learning to read is letter recognition and phoneme awareness. The goal of this lesson is to introduce and recognize the difference between the letters “M” and “N”. I will go over the difference in how the letters look both upper and lower case. And also teach the sounds of the letters and how to distinguish between them. By the end of the lesson I hope the children will be able to distinguish their different sounds, and recognize and write both the upper and lower case forms of “M” and “N”

Materials:

            ~Book: Mumps by Janet M. Schwartz

            ~Dry Erase Board

            ~Dry Erase Markers

            ~Flash Cards of the letters in the alphabet

            ~Pictures of words that begin with “M” and “N” and pictures things that do not

               Begin with either of these letters.

                        -mouse, nail, box, M&M, marker, necklace, nose

            ~Lined Paper

            ~Pencils

Procedures:

1. “Who knows what makes up words?” We use letters to make words. “Who can tell me what their favorite letter is?”…”Great those are all letters we use to help us make words that we spell and read.” So today we are going to practice recognizing letters and the sounds that they make.

                                                               i.      ~To review some letters I will show them letters on flash cards and have them say the name of the letter and the sound that it makes.

2. “Today we are going to learn about my two favorite letters “M” and “N”. Let’s try a tongue twister with these letters. “Mickey Mouse Makes Nelly’s Nest Nice and Neat”. The letter “M” makes the sound /m/ like when we rub our tummy when we like some that we eat like cake (I will demonstrate the motion of rubbing your tummy and the sound and do the same thing with n pushing the throttle of the boat down and make the sound). And “N” makes the /n/ sound like driving a motor boat. I’m going to say our tongue twister stretching out the M and N sounds so listen carefully to the difference in the sounds then we will say it all together. “Mmmickey Mmmouse Mmmakes Nnnelly’s Nnnest Nnnice and Nnnneat.” Alright now we will say it all together stretching out our Mmm and Nnnn sounds. “Great Job everyone did a great job”. Now let’s practice our tongue twister using the motions we learned for each sound. Rub you tummy when you drag out the Mmmm sound and push the throttle down on the boat when you drag out the Nnnn sound. Just like this “Mmmickey Mmmouse Mmmakes Nnnelly’s Nnnest Nnnice and Nnnneat.” (modeling the motions). Alright now lets do it all together just like that. “Mmmickey Mmmouse Mmmakes Nnnelly’s Nnnest Nnnice and Nnnneat.” (All doing the motions together.

3. Now we are going to look at some pictures and I want you to tell me if they begin with the /m/ sound or the /n/ sound. Show pictures of mouse, nail, box, M&M, marker, necklace, nose.

4. Now that we now the sounds that M and N make lets practice writing them. We will begin by writing upper case of both letters. I will demonstrate on the dry erase board (starting the M) how to write the letter using the sky, fence, and ground to help guide us. I will tell the children to begin with their pencil on the ground and go straight up to the sky. Then down the mountain to the fence and back up the mountain from the fence to the sky and then finally straight down again from the sky to the ground. Then we will make the capital letter N by beginning at the ground, going straight up to the sky, then down the mountain to the ground and straight back up from the ground to the sky. Then we will make the lower case letters beginning with n. First make a straight line down from the fence to the ground and then make a hump from our straight line down to the ground. Now to make an m we make an n and then add another hump.

5. Now we will read the book Mumps by Janet M. Swartz. In this story Ann’s sister Cathy woke up one morning with the mumps. Ann is worried that she has the mumps also. Let’s read the story to see if Ann has the mumps also. When we are reading this story lets listen for the /m/ and /n/ sounds. When we hear the /m/ sound rub your tummy like we practiced when saying our tongue twister. The /n/ sound will be a little harder to hear because it will be at the end of the word, not the beginning. So lets listen hard for this sound and push the throttle of our speed boat down when we hear the /n/ sound

Assessments

1.      I will look at the students written work and see how well they wrote the letters

2.      I will hold up the pictures of the words that begin with M or N and the students will write either an M or N with their best hand writing write what letter the picture began with

Reference

        ~Mumps . Swartz, Janet. Illustrated by Mary Ann Zapalac. 1997 Dominie Press, Inc.

        ~The reading Genie (http://www.auburn.edu/~murraba/.)