Um, You're Under
Uncle's
Umbrella
Sammie Patton
Rational:
In order
to have words, there must be vowels. Children must learn their vowels
and their
phonemes in order to read words. The short vowels are difficult to
learn
because they all sound similar and sometimes sound differently when
paired with
consonants. This lesson will teach students the short u phoneme which
is /uh/.
Through a letterbox lesson and activities such as tongue twisters and
an
activity to practice identifying the letter u and its phoneme /uh/
children
will become more familiar with the short vowel, u.
Materials:
Dry
Erase Board & Marker
Tongue Twister: Um, you're
Under Uncle's Umbrella.
Letter Manipulatives: u,b,g,s,d,t,j,p and Letterboxes
Primary Paper
Pencils
Picture of a person under an umbrella
Picture of a person with their
finger on their chin & a puzzled look
Book, Bud the Sub
Letter /u/ Activity Sheet with
pictures of items starting with the letter u
and some items starting with other letters than u.
Procedure:
1.
To
begin the lesson, I will introduce students to the letter u. I will
write the
letter u on the board and tell them that "this is the letter u and it
says
/uh/. Have you ever not known the answer to a question and said /uh/?
Then you
were making the sound that u makes."� I
will then show them the picture of the person with their finger on
their chin
saying "uh" and that will help them to better associate the letter with
its
phoneme.
2.
Next,
I will teach them a tongue twister to
practice saying the /uh/ sound. "Can everyone repeat this tongue
twister after
me? Um, you're Under Uncle's
Umbrella. Great Job!"� I will show them
how to use their fingers to imagine drawing letter u in the air. I will
model
for them how to take their finger and "swoosh"� it down and then right
back up
and then draw a straight line down. "Now,
when we say this tongue twister, I want everyone to use their magic
finger
pencils and draw the letter u in the air when you say it in the tongue
twister.
Um, you're Under Uncle's
Umbrella. Good job everybody!"� This
exercise will help them learn how to write the letter u along with
practicing
what letter u says.
3.
Now
that we know what the letter u looks and sounds like, we will practice
identifying the letter u in other words. "We all know that there are
words that
start with the letter U like Umbrella and Uncle, but the letter u is
also found
in the middle of some words such as b-u-us, tu-u-g, and ju-ump. We have
to
listen extra close to find the u sound in these words." The activity
will
involve children listening to me say different words and then using
their magic
pencils to let me know if they hear the letter u in: Umbrella, Uncle,
Frog,
Cupcake, Bicycle, Snap, Mug. "Great job!"�
4.
I will
now let the children practice writing their letter u's since we have
practiced
the phoneme. "Remember the imaginary u that we wrote in the air? Now we
are
going to really write letter on our paper!"�
I will give each child some primary paper and model how to write
the
lowercase u on the board. First we will start at the fence and curve
down to
the sidewalk; we will curve back up to the fence and then straight down
to the
sidewalk again. I will ask them to write the letter u five times. When
we are
finished, they will all say /UH/ real loud! Great job everybody!
5.
To
introduce the letterbox, I will explain that when we say words, our
mouths move
differently for each sound in the word. When we say the word M-U-G, our
mouth
moves 3 different ways. Mmmm-Uuuu-Ggggg. This is why we need 3
letterboxes for
this word. I will use the dry erase board and draw an example letterbox
to show
the students how to put each letter into which box. "Now, let's see if
everyone
can put the letters M-U-G into each box to make the word mug. Great job
everybody!"� I will help the children when we get to the other words
and
make
sure that they understand that each vocal gesture is given a box. The
students
will be given other 3 and 4 phoneme words to practice.
6.
We will read the story, Bud the Sub by Sheila Cushman. This
story will better help them identify the phoneme /uh/ when reading
words such
as Bud, Sub, Gus, and Tugboat. "Listen to the words in the title of the
story,
Bu-u-u-d the Su-u-u-ub. Raise your hand if you heard the letter u.
Great job!
Now let's read the story and I want everyone to listen close for the
letter u
in this story!"�
7.
To assess the children's
learning of the
letter u and its phoneme, students will complete an activity sheet with
pictures. The pictures will be of some objects that have the letter u
such as
cup, jug, and duck and some other objects without the letter u. The
students
will complete the sheet individually and by writing the letter u on top
of the
pictures of the cup, jug, and duck. This will help me better understand
which
children know the letter u and its correspondence, and which children
may need
more practice.
References:
Cushman, Sheila. Bud
the Sub. Educational Insights.
Saye, Maggie,
Uhhh, I'm confused!
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/odysseys/sayebr.html