Catch Your Breath with H
Emergent Reading Lesson
By: Jenny Rodriguez
Rationale.
Our goal is to have a phonemic awareness of /h/. It is important for students to
have a firm understanding of all the phonemes in our alphabetic code. The letter
h has a simple phoneme cue that can
be triggered in a direct lesson. Students will be able to sound out and
recognize the letter h. We will be working as a group on blending, phonetic
cues, book talk, and tongue twisters. Then the children will be able to work
separately on spelling and worksheet assessments. By the end of this lesson they
should be able to recognize any words with the /h/.
Materials. Poster board with H, a
picture of a dog panting, butcher paper, permanent marker, primary paper (for
practice spelling the letter h),
pencils, projector, white board, expo markers, note cards (words: hop, hat, pay,
her, him, spot), Chicka, Chicka, Boom
Boom by Bill Martin, worksheet with a hat on it, worksheet with random words
on it, and markers
Procedures for carrying out the
lesson in detail, with numbered steps.
Our new skill will be valuable because it will help my students recognize all
those words with h.
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 /h/. We
spell /h/ with the letter H. I will show them a paper with the letter
H on it.
Let’s pretend you are a dog panting, we would be panting /h/, /h/, /h/.
[Pantomime is paws out and tongue sticking out]. Notice your breath
coming out of your mouth to make that /h/. You also need to open your mouth
slightly. Here is a picture of a dog panting. See how his mouth is slightly
open. This is Harry the panting dog.
“Next let me model how you would find /h/ in the word
ham. I am going to stretch out the
word ham
in super slow motion and I want you guys to put on your listening
ears for our panting dog /h/.
hhhh-aaa-mmm. Slower: hhhhh-aaaa-mmm. Found it! I could feel my breath leaving
my mouth with that first part of the word. I can hear the panting dog /h/ in
ham.
Let’s try a tongue twister (have it already written on a piece of butcher
paper). “Hannah has a handful of hot hamburgers in her hand.” Now everybody says
it together three times. The fourth time I want everyone to stretch out that /h/
sound at the beginning of each word. “Hhhannah hhas a hhhandful of hhhot
hhhamburger in hhher hhand.” Now we are going to do it again, this time we are
going to break that /h/ sound off from the word. “/h/ annah /h/as a /h/andful of
/h/ot /h/ambugers in /h/er /h/and.”
Spelling: students should go to their tables and grab primary paper and a
pencil. “First, we will start with writing the capital H. Upper case H starts
with the pencil tip on the rooftop moving down towards the sidewalk and then
another line that is the same rooftop to sidewalk these two lines should be a
pinky apart. But then connect them with a short line right across the fence.
There is our capital H. Now our lower case h. We are going to draw another line
rooftop down to the sidewalk. Then from
the sidewalk comes a hump towards the fence and back down to the side walk
again. So that uppercase h goes above our fence to the top line.” They can also
keep their spelling in a journal that way they can flip back to all their
letters for reference.
As a group we are going to work on hearing that phonetic sound. Do you hear /h/
in hat or mat? Help or clip? Pair or hair? Helmet or racket? Now I am going to
say a few more examples and I want you to raise your hand if you know the
answer. Do you hear /h/ in save or have? Heart or smart? Lab or ham? Hall or
mall? Let’s see if you can spot the mouth move /h/ in some words. Breathe like
you ran 10 laps if you hear /h/: hand, man, like, help, melt, hug, flower.
Say: “Let’s look at our Alphabet book called
Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom by Bill
Martin. This book helps us review the whole alphabet. Let’s start at the
beginning of the book with all our letters before
h. The words with /h/ I want you to
pant like our dog friend Harry. When you see the letter
H I want you to put out two paws and
pant. Now this book is about the alphabet. What do you think is going to happen
after the letter h?” This will help
me notice if they are recognizing that /h/ and the letter
h. Also it is an effective book talk
because students want to know what is going to happen with the rest of the
alphabet. After reading this book we are going to make an H with hearts to put
at the top of the coconut tree set up in the classroom.
Show HOP on a note card and model how to decide if it is hop or pop. The
H tells me to pant like a dog, /h/,
so this word is hhh-op, hop. I will show the note card and ask you which word it
is. You try some: HAT: pat or hat? PAY: pay or hay? HER: her or set? HIM: pen or
him? SPOT: hot or spot?
For assessment, distribute the worksheet. On the top of the sheet there is a
hat. At the bottom there are a lot of words. Some that starts with /h/ and some
that do not start with /h/. If the word starts with /h/ the student should cut
it out, and glue it to the inside of the hat. Check students work. Also
throughout this lesson I will be taking formative assessment on student’s verbal
performance on the /h/.
Reference:
Book:
Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom by Bill
Martin
Journal: 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.l
Bruce Murray, Getting Poppin’ with P:
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/projects/bensonel.html