Ms.
Dyess
Healthy and Happy With The Letter H
An Emergent Literacy Lesson Design
Rationale: This lesson will help children identify /h/, the phoneme represented by H. Students will learn to recognize /h/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation (huffing and puffing from running) and the letter symbol H, practice finding /h/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /h/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.
Materials:
- Primary paper and pencil
- chart with "Happily hammering heavily with my hand"
- drawing paper and crayons
- Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss
- word cards with HAM, HARP, HEN, and HALF
- assessment worksheet coloring H and h.
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 /h/. We spell /h/ with letter H. /h/ sounds like huffing and puffing after you’ve been running.
2. Let's pretend to huff and puff, /h/, /h/, /h/. [Pantomime running with arms] Notice the shape of your mouth? (Open mouth). When we say /h/, we push all of the air out of our mouths through our slightly open lips.
3. Let me show you how to find /h/ in the word ham. I'm going to stretch ham out in super slow motion and listen for my huff and puff. Hhh-a-m. Slower: Hhhh-aa-mm. There it was! I felt all of the air push out from the back of my throat. I can hear the huff and puff in ham.
4. Let's try a tongue twister [on chart]. “Happily hammering heavily with my hand." Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /h/ at the beginning of the words. "Hhhappily hhhammering hhheavily with my hhhand." Try it again, and this time break it off the word: “/H/ appily /h/ ammering /h/ eavily with my /h/ and.”
5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We use letter H to spell /h/. Let's write the lowercase letter h. Start just below the rooftop. Draw a straight line all the way down to the sidewalk. When you touch the sidewalk, I want you to draw back up to the fence and then loop down back to the sidewalk. I want to see everyone’s H’s – once I’ve given you a smiley face on your first one, I want you to draw 9 more just like it.
6. Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /h/ in have or gone? head or face? hammock or swing? Hang or drop? Happy or sad? Say: Let's see if you can spot the mouth move /fh/ in some words. Run with your arms if you hear /h/: The, hairy, bair, hung, in, a, hammock, in, the, hemlock, tree.
7. Say: "Let's look at Horton Hears a Who. Dr. Seuss tells us about an elephant whose name starts with H, and he hears a little voice coming from a piece of dust. Let’s find out what it’s all about." Read excerpts, over-enunciating /h/. Ask children if they can think of other words with /h/. Discuss the sill names Dr. Seuss came up with, and then ask them to make up their own and draw pictures of them. Display their work.
8. Show HOG and model how to decide if it is hog or dog: The H tells me to huff and puff, /h/, so this word is hhh-og, hog. You try some: HAM: ham or sam? HARP: tarp or harp? HEN: hen or pen? HALF: half or calf?
9. For assessment, distribute the worksheet. Students are to color the capital H’s one color and lowercase h’s another. Call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #8.
References:
“Ha Ha Having Fun with H” – Allie Harmon http://aah0011.wix.com/letslearntoread
Reference: 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
Worksheet: http://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/h-color1.htm
