Sneeze with short A

By: Ashley Cooke

Beginning to Read

Rationale: This lesson will help children practice identify /a/, the phoneme represented by the letter ãaä. Students will learn to recognize ãaä in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation (sneezing: ãa-a-a-a chuä) and the letter symbol a, practice finding /a/ in words,

and apply phoneme awareness with /a/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing

rhyming words from beginning letters.

Materials:  Primary paper and pencil; chart with ãAshley asked Adam about an astronaut who ate an appleä; word cards with AT, AND, HAD, FAT, SAT, and ADAM; book The Cat Nap, assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /a/, (URL at the bottom).

Procedures: 1.  Say: The English language is a tricky language to learn. It is hard to learn how to say these letters and what these letters stand for. The mouth moves different ways with each new letter we say. Today we are going to work on saying the letter ãaä and moving our mouth as we say the letter. We spell /a/ with the letter A looks like a circle with a tail.

2. Letâs pretend to sneeze. When you sneeze your mouth makes opens wide like your sneezing: like this: a-a-a-chu. See how your mouth opened wide? Your tongue stays on the bottom of your mouth.

3. Let me show you how to find the letter a in the word box. Iâm going to stretch the word box out in slow motion and I want you to look for my lips mouth opening wide; a-a-adam. Now Iâm going to stretch it out even slower; a-a-a-adam. There it was! I felt my mouth opening wide like I am getting ready to sneeze! Now let me show you how to say /a/ in the word rabbit. I see /a/ in the middle of the word, /r/ at the beginning of the word, /b/ after /a/, /i/ after /b/ and /t/ at the end. Now letâs put it all together, /r/ /a/ /b/ /i/ /t/ and there you have rabbit.

4. Letâs try a tongue twister (on chart). ãAshley asked Adam about an astronaut who ate an appleä. Letâs say it three times together. Now this time say it again but this time say the letter A three times at the beginning of each word;ä Aaashley aaasked Aaadam, about aaan aaastronaut who aaate aaan aaaple.ä Now say it again and this time break the /a/ sound off the word; /a/ shley /a/sked /a/ dam about /a/n /a/ntelope.

5. (Have students take out the primary paper and a pencil).  We use letter A to spell /a/. Capital a looks like a Christmas tree with a line in the middle. Letâs write the lower case letter a. Start at the fence and make a circle all the way down to the sidewalk and back up to the fence. Go back to the fence and give it a tail all the way down to the ditch. After I put a smiley face on everyoneâs paper I want you to write 7 more just like you just did.

6. Call on students to answer how they knew: Did you hear /a/ in bat or bet? At or feet? Ashley or Emily? Cab or dog? Letâs see if you can spot the mouth movement /a/. Sneeze if you hear /a/ in these words: cat, bat, fat, hand, head, bed, box, hat, and slap? Now letâs do a letterbox lesson together. We are going to spell bat. What sound goes in the first box? Good! /b/ goes in the first box. What do you hear in the middle? /a/, good! We hear /a/ so we should put /a/ in the middle letterbox. Now what sound do you hear at the end of the word? /t/, very good so weâll put /t/ in the last box. Now read our word·bat. Very good!

7. Say: ãLetâs look at a book called The Cat Nap? This book is about a cat who likes to take nap. In this book we will hear the sound /a/ in a lot of words. I want you to listen for the /a/ sound and when you hear it I want you to pretend like you are sneezing and make the movement as you are sneezing. After we read this book I want you to draw a picture of your favorite part of the book that had the sound /a/ in it.

8. Show CAT and model how to decide if it is cat or dog: The A tells me to sneeze, /a/, so it is caaat. Now itâs your turn: RABBIT: rabbit or bubble? BATTLE: battle or fiddle? ASHLEY: Ashley or Emily?

9. For assessment give each student a worksheet. Students are to complete the partial

spellings and color the pictures that have the letter a, /a/ in them. Call students individually to read

the phonetic cue words from step #8.

Assessment website: http://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/vowels/a-begins-mm.htm\

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