Pirate
Ready
Rationale: Phonemic awareness leads
to learning
to read and spell words. Phonemic awareness is not spontaneously
acquired but
can be taught successfully. A child’s
ability to discriminate phonemes is one of the best predictors of
first-year
reading achievement following pre-reading letter knowledge. No matter
the level
of a child’s phonemic awareness, to make use of it, he or she must
learn to
identify the forms of each individual letter visually.
Learning identities of letters takes time and
practice. Big books are meant to be read over and over. This lesson
will help
children identify /ar/. They will learn to recognize /ar/ in spoken and
written
words by learning meaningful representation and a letter symbol and
then
practice finding and using /ar/ while reading and spelling. These
activities will
make the correspondence more memorable as the students review. They
will get
more familiar with learning to decode and use accurate finger pointing.
Materials: Primary paper and pencil;
crayons and
drawing paper; Book- Jane and Babe; picture page with
car, star, cat, bus, mars, bat.
Procedures: 1. Introduce the lesson
by
explaining that when we write, our language is a secret code and we
have to
learn what the letters stand for.
Explain the mouth moves to make sound as we make our words.
Today we are
going to work on spotting the way our mouth moves when we say /ar/. At
first it
may be hard to catch on, but as you get to know it, you will be able to
point
out the correspondence /ar/ in spoken
and written words.
2.
Ask
students: Did you ever hear a pirate on a movie or TV show making the
sound /ar/?
That’s the mouth we are looking for in words. Let’s pretend to play a
pirate
and say /ar/. [close one eye while acting like holding a wheel or
driving.]
Make your pirate noise while you sail three times: /ar/, /ar/,/ar/.
3.
Let’s try
a tongue twister [on chart]. “Dark larks enjoy car trips looking at
stars.” Now
everyone say it three times together. Now say our tongue twister again,
and
this time stretch the /ar/ at the end of the words.
“Daarrk laarrks enjoy caarr trips while
looking at staarrs.”
4.
[Have
students take out primary pencil and paper]. We can use the letters A
and R to
spell /ar/. Lets write it. Ask students where to start on the paper
(hat). Ask
how far they are to draw down (shoe). Demonstrate going back up to the
belt
line, curve over, and back around without lifting your pencil. I want
to look
at everyone’s /ar/. Once I give you a smily face, I want you to make
nine more
just like it. When you see the letters ar
in a word from now on, remember that means to say /ar/. Hand out bed
worksheet
and model how to distinguish the sound in words. Have students put it
away with
their things for further practice.
5.
Now, I
want to show you how to find /ar/ in the word star. I
am going to stretch it out very slowly while you listen for
our drum sound. Ss-tt-aarr.. There it is!
6.
Call on
students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /ar/ in sick or far? Ball or Car? Lark
or Brush? Mop or Dark?
Be a pirate
if you hear /ar/. Dark, Larks, enjoy,
car, trips, looking, at, stars. [Point out that dark
has /ar/ and trips
does not] Have a letterbox lesson on these words involving the class
calling on
each to determine if everyone can use this strategy.
7.
Say: “Jane is a woman who works at the zoo and Babe is the lion. Jane
enjoys feeding and petting Babe even when he is in his cage. You will
have to read to find out what happens next.” Read Jane and Babe and talk about the
story. Read it again and
have students point out the sounds /ar/ and the correspondence. List
the words
chosen on the board and then have each student draw brown bear and
write a
message about it to encourage invented spelling. Their work should be
displayed.
8.
For
assessment, distribute the picture sheet, and have the students come to
my desk
individually and circle the pictures whose names have the
correspondence /ar/.
I will have them read the book to me and take notes on miscues to look
at their
improvements.
Reference: Beginning
To Read: Thinking and Learning about Print. By: Marilyn Adams, 1990.
Pre-teaching: Mrs.
King, 1st grade, Smith Station Primary School, AL, 2009.