Shave Your Face with V
An Emergent Literacy Lesson
Rationale:
This lesson will help children identify /v/, the phoneme
represented by V.
Students
will learn to recognize /v/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful
representation (shaving with an electric razor) and the letter symbol
V, practice finding /v/ in
words, and apply phoneme awareness with /v/ in phonetic cue reading by
distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.
Materials:
Primary paper and pencil; chart with "Virginia visited
Vicky and gave her violets and vegetables with vitamins."; drawing paper and
crayons; Dr. Seuss's ABC
(Random House, 1963); word cards with
VAN, FAN, VOTE, ROTE, NEVER,
and ALWAYS.
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 /v/ with
letter V. V looks like
an electric razor, and /v/ sounds like the noise electric razors make when they
are on.
2. Let's pretend to shave with our electric razors, /v/, /v/, /v/. [pretend to
shave] Notice where your top teeth are? (Touching lower lip). When we say /v/,
we blow air between out top teeth and lower lip.
3. Let me show you how to find /v/ in the word
give. I'm going to stretch
give out in super slow
motion and listen for my electric razor. Ggg-i-i-ive. Slower: Ggg-i-i-i-vvv-e
There it was! I felt my teeth touch my lip and blow air. I can feel the electric
razor /v/ in give.
4. Let's try a tongue twister [on chart]. "Virginia visited Vicky and gave her
violets and vegetables with vitamins." Everybody say it three times together.
Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /v/ at the beginning of the words.
"Vvvvirginia vvvvisited Vvvvicky and gavvve her vvvviolets and vvvegetables with
vvvitamins." Try it again, and this time break it off the word: "/v/ irginia /v/
isited /v/ icky and ga/v/e her /v/ iolets and /v/ egetables with /v/ itamins.”
5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We
use letter V to spell
/v/. Capital V looks like an electric razor. Let's write the lowercase letter
v. Start just below the
fence. Make your line like a slide down to the sidewalk. Then connect a line
going up to the fence like a slide looks too. I want to see everybody's
v. After I check your work, I
want you to make nine more just like it.
6. Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do
you hear /v/ in give or
gig? five or
six?
drive or for? live
or life? view
or draw?
Say: Let's see if you can spot the mouth move /v/ in some
words. Shave your face if you hear /v/: The, very,
violet, car, drove, to, the, vegetable, store.
7. Say: "Let's look at an alphabet book. Dr. Seuss tells us
about a funny creature whose name starts with V.
Can you guess?" Read pages on V, drawing out /v/.
Ask children if they can think of other words with /v/. Ask them to make up a
silly creature name like Visious-vibber-vooter, or Vater-viper-vamp. Then have
each student write their silly name with invented spelling and draw a picture of
their silly creature. Display their work.
8. Show IVY and model how to decide if it is
ivy or
icy: The
V tells me to shave, /v/, so
this word is i-vvv-y, ivy.
You try some: VAN: van or fan? VOTE: vote or rote? DIVE:
dive or run? LOVE: love or sort? NEVER: never or always? Very or cherry?
9. For assessment, distribute the worksheet. Students are
to complete the partial spellings and color the pictures that begin with
V. Call students individually
to read the phonetic cue words from step #8.
References:
Dr. Suess’s ABC. Random House, 1963.
Brush Your Teeth with Bruce Murray
www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/sightings/murrayel.html
Return to Epiphanies: http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/epiphanies.html