Emergent Literacy
Bruce Murray
Rationale:
This
lesson will help children identify /f/, the phoneme represented by F. Students will learn to
recognize /f/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation
(brushing
teeth) and the letter symbol F,
practice finding /f/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /f/ in
phonetic
cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.
Materials:
Primary
paper
and pencil; chart with "Fred's furry ferret feels frisky"; drawing
paper and crayons; Dr. Seuss's ABC
(Random House, 1963); word cards with FOG,
FIX, MEET, FIND, PORK, and FAKE; assessment worksheet
identifying pictures with /f/ (URL
below).
Procedures: 1. Say: Our written language is a
secret code. The tricky part is learning what letters stand for—the
mouth moves
we make as we say words. Today we're going to work on spotting the
mouth move
/f/. We spell /f/ with letter F.
F looks like a toothbrush, and
/f/ sounds like brushing teeth.
2.
Let's pretend to brush our
teeth, /f/, /f/, /f/. [Pantomime
brushing teeth] Notice where your top teeth are? (Touching lower lip).
When we
say /f/, we blow air between out top teeth and lower lip.
3.
Let me show you how to find /f/ in
the word left. I'm going
to stretch left out in super slow motion and listen
for my toothbrush. Lll-e-e-eft.
Slower: Lll-e-e-e-fff-t There it was!
I felt my teeth touch my lip and blow air. I can feel the
toothbrush /f/
in left.
4.
Let's try a tongue twister [on chart].
Fred's furry ferret feels frisky. Everybody say it three times
together. Now
say it again, and this time, stretch the /f/ at the beginning of the
words. "Fffred's
fffurry ffferret fffeels fffrisky." Try it again, and this time break
it
off the word: "/f/ red's /f/ urry /f/ erret /f/ eels /f/ risky.
5.
[Have students take out primary paper
and pencil]. We use letter F to spell
/f/. Capital F looks like a toothbrush.
Let's write the lowercase letter f.
Start just below the rooftop. Start to make a little c up in the air,
then
straighten it out all the way down to the sidewalk. Then cross it at
the
fence. I want to see everybody's f. After I put a smile on it, I want you
to make nine more just like it.
6.
Call on students to answer and tell
how they knew: Do you hear /f/ in work
or fun? finger or toe?
on or off? Lift or drop? Stiff or sore?
Say: Let's
see if you can spot the mouth move /f/ in some words. Brush your teeth
if you
hear /f/: The, funny, furry, bug, flew,
far, to, the, pink, flowers.
7.
Say: "Let's look at an alphabet
book. Dr. Seuss tells us about a funny
creature whose name starts with F.
Can you guess?" Read page 16,
drawing out /f/. Ask children if they can
think of other words
with /f/. Ask them to make up a silly
creature name like Fiffer-feffer-feff, or Footer-flipper-fang. Then
have each
student write their silly name with invented spelling and draw a
picture of
their silly creature. Display their work.
8.
Show FOG and model how to decide if
it is fog or dog: The F
tells me to
brush my teeth, /f/, so this word is fff-og,
fog. You try some: FIX:
fix or mix? MEET: feet or
meet? FIND: find or mind? PORK: fork or pork? FAKE: fake or make?
9.
For assessment, distribute the
worksheet. Students are to complete the
partial spellings and color the pictures that begin with F.
Call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from
step #8.
Reference:
Byrne,
B., & Fielding-Barnsley, R. (1990). Acquiring the alphabetic
principle: A
case for teaching recognition of phoneme identity. Journal
of Educational Psychology, 82, 805-812.
Assessment
worksheet: http://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/f-begins2.htm
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