Aaah!...The Baby is Crying
Aaah!...The Baby is Crying
Rationale: An important step in becoming a fluent reader is learning how to recognize phonemes. To read and spell words, children need to learn that letters stand for phonemes and spellings map out the phonemes in spoken words. Children are not able to match letters to phonemes until they recognize the phonemes. The short vowels are very important phonemes to learn. This lesson includes the short a vowel. This lesson will help children identify the phoneme /a/ (short a). They will learn to recognize /a/ in spoken words by learning an insightful representation and a letter symbol. The children will also practice finding /a/ in words used in a story.
Materials: Primary paper, pencil; chart with ãAnna asked Adam for a bat, bag, cap, and an appleä; drawing paper and crayons; picture page (pictures are drawn by teacher) with bat, bag, bug, boy, apple, cap, grass, girl, pig, dog; Catâs Nap (Educational Insight).
Procedures:
1. Introduce
the lesson by explaining how our written language is a special
code.
The tough part is learning what each letter stands for÷the mouth
moves we make as we say words. Today we are going to work on how
to find the mouth move /a/. It may seem hard to hear the /a/, but
as you get to know it, you will be able to find /a/ in many words.
2. Ask
students:
Have you ever heard a baby cry? The baby says /a/ when he or she
cries. Well, that is the mouth move we are looking for in
words.
Letâs pretend that we are babies crying. /a/! /a/! We
must not feel good.
3. Letâs
try a tongue twister (on chart). ãAnna asked Adam for a
bat,
bag, cap, and an apple.ä Everybody say it three times
together.
Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /a/ at the beginning of
the
words. ãAaanna aaasked Aaadam for a baaat, baaag, caaap,
aaand
aaan aaapple.ä Try it again, and this time break it off the
word: ã/a/ nna /a/ sked /a/dam for a b /a/ t, b /a/
g, c /a/ p, /a/ nd /a/ n /a/ pple.ä Great Work!
4. [Have
students
take out primary paper and pencil]. We can use letter a to spell
/a/. Letâs practice writing it. I will show you how
to
make the letter a. Start a little under the fence, curve up and
touch
the fence, got towards the left window and draw a curve down to the
sidewalk,
curve over, and back up to the fence where you started, and now,
without
lifting your pencil, draw straight down to the sidewalk. [Model
each
instruction given]. I want to see everybodyâs a.
After
I put a smile on it, I want you to make six more just like it.
When
you see a all by itself in a word, thatâs the signal to say /a/.
5. Ask students
the following questions and call on them to answer and tell how they
knew:
Do you hear /a/ in bat or bucket? Apple or grape? Snack or
lunch? Grass or dirt? Cat or dog? Letâs see if
you can spot the mouth move /a/ in some words. Say /a/ if you
hear
/a/ and say no if you donât. [Give words one by one].
Anna asked Adam for a bat, bag, cap, and an apple.
6. Read
Catâs
Nap and talk about the story. Read it again and have students
raise
their hand when they hear words with /a/. List the words they
choose
on the board. Have each child draw a picture of a cat and write a
message about it using invented spelling. Display their work.
7. For
assessment,
give each student a picture page and help each student name the
pictures.
Ask each student to circle the pictures whose names have /a/.
Reference: Eldredge, J. Lloyd. Developing Phonemic Awareness. Teaching Decoding in Holistic Classrooms. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1995.