Emergent
Literacy Design: Play Ball!
A Lesson Design
for
Emergent Literacy
Rationale:
Before young children can learn to read and spell words, they
must learn
to recognize letters and the sounds or phonemes that those letters
represent. Some letters are easily
recognized,
while others are more difficult due to their similarities with other
letters. Two such letters that cause
students constant confusion are the letters b
and d. This lesson will
help children recognize
letter b and also to differentiate
from other letters such as letter d.
Once students can recognize the letter, then
they will be introduced to the phoneme that b represents.
Materials:
primary paper, pencil, chart which contains the tongue twister: Barry and Becky brought bats and balls to
play baseball, a letter card with the letter b, Dr.
Seuss’ ABC book
Procedure:
1. Assess
knowledge and review any letters that students have already been
introduced to
by holding up several letters previously learned but including the
letter b and asking student to identify
them.
2. Once
the students have been shown letter b, assist the
students in learning to
print b by offering the following
example: “To play baseball you must have
a bat and a ball. It is the same way
when you write the letter b; you must
have a bat and a ball.” Model for the
students by writing a b on the board
and saying; “First you draw a bat from the ceiling to the floor. Then you must draw the ball next to the
bottom of the bat and make them touch to hit the ball.”
Explain to students that d also looks like a
ball and a bat, but that it is made with a
yo-yo and a string and shouldn’t be confused with b. “To make a d, first you write
a circle on the
middle line down to the floor for the yo-yo and then you draw the
string
touching the yo-yo from the ceiling to the floor.
3. Next,
have students pull out primary paper and
pencil and practice writing a row of b.
Now I need for
everyone to make b on their own. After I put a smiley face on
your paper,
I need for you to make a line of b.”
4. Then,
refer to the chart and have students
repeat the tongue twister: Barry and
Becky brought a bat and ball to play baseball.
Bring the repeated /b/ sound in the tongue twister to the
students’
attention. Explain to them that b is the
/b/ sound that you hear in ball. Model
this sound for them.
5. Ask
students a series of questions to help
build phonemic awareness of the letter b.
“Do you hear /b/ in bad or dad? ball
or call? base or race? bag or rag?
6. Read
the page on B from Dr. Seuss’ ABC book
that contains numerous words containing b. Have the students raise their hands with they
hear the /b/ sound in words as you read.
7. To
assess what students have gained from this
lesson, distribute the coloring page mentioned below.
Have students color the letter b with a green
crayon and use a black crayon to color any letters that look like b but are not b. To
assess phonemic
awareness, revisit step number 5 and add more words. Also, step number
6 is a
great assessment tool for phonemic awareness.
References:
Buddy the Bee Bats Balls with
the Letter B, Jamie Ann Mathis http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/begin/mathisel.html
Activity Letter
Recognition Sheet
http://www.tampareads.com/alphabet/letter-write/bw-line/b-letter.pdf
For questions or
comments email me at freemjh@auburn.edu