EMERGENT
LITERACY
P-P-Pitter Patter of P
Emergent Literacy
Rationale: This lesson will help children identify /p/, the phoneme represented by P. Students will learn to recognize /p/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation (the pitter patter of a dripping sink) and the letter symbol P, practice finding /p/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /p/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters. They will also use this new awareness to identify /p/ in the names of various foods by comparison.
Materials: Primary paper and pencil; poster board with “Peter pets puppies as they pass”; drawing paper and crayons; word cards with PIG, PART, MINE, PORK, and POKE; assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /f/ (URL below) and creation of small booklet identifying phoneme /p/.
Procedures:
1. Say: Sometimes it can be hard to understand the way our language works. It is a secret code that lets us understand each other. This secret code is made up of letters, and our mouth moves in different ways when we say different letters. Today we're going to talk about what moves our mouth makes when we say /p/. We spell /p/ with letter p. P looks like a drop of water falling out of the spout of a sink, and /p/ sounds like the pitter patter of a drop of water splashing.
2. Let's all pretend to be sink with dripping water, /p/, /p/, /p/. [Pantomime dripping water-using arm as spout] Notice the way your lips come together when you say /p/. (Touching pursed lips). When we say /p/, we purse out lips together and then push out air between our top lip and lower lip.
3. Let me show you how to find /p/ in the word pizza. I'm going to stretch pizza out in super slow motion and listen for the pitter-patter of the dripping sink. Ppp-pI-zz-ah. Slower: Pppp-III-zzz-ah. There it was! I felt my lips come together and then pushed out air between them. I can feel the pitter patter of a sink drip /p/ in pizza.
4. Let's try a tongue twister [on chart]. "Peter pets puppies as they pass." Everybody say it three times together. (Say three times with the class). Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /p/ at the beginning of the words. "Ppppeter ppppets ppppuppies as they ppppass.” Try it again, and this time break it off the word, and make the sound seperately: /p/ eter /p/ ets /p/ uppies as they /p/ ass.
5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We use letter P to spell /p/. Capital P looks like a dripping sink. Let's write the lowercase letter p. I want you to start at the fence, and drop all the way down below the sidewalk. Then bring your pencil back up almost to the fence, and curve back around to the sidewalk, almost like a backwards c. I want to see everybody's p. I will come around and put a sticker on your paper, and then I want you to practice making the lowercase letter p ten more times.
6. Game: Allow students to respond as a class with “yuck” if they hear no /p/, and “yum” if they hear /p/ in the food that I name: Do you hear /p/ in hamburger or pizza? cake or pie? peas or broccoli? [From this point on, call on students individually to see if they have grasped the phoneme.] peanuts or almonds? pineapple or lemon? pickles or chips? Say: Let's see if you can spot the mouth move /p/ in some words. [Whole class together] Use your hand to show a dripping sink if you hear /p/: pink, pasta, grass, couch, people, tree, passport, bed, part.
7. Say: "Let's look at an alphabet book. This book is called P Is For Putt and it tells the story of a golfer and all the letters that are in the world around him. When he putts, he hears /p/. Can you think of anything you see everyday that starts with /p/?" Read page 16, drawing out /p/. Ask children to draw a picture of themselves, surrounded by all the things that start with /p/ that they saw today. (Examples: pets, pizza, pencils, people, etc.) Allow them to color the picture, and then display in the classroom as a reminder for /p/.
8. Show PIG and model how to decide if it is pig or fig: The p tells me that the sink is dripping, /p/ /p/ /p/, so this word is ppppp-ig, pig. You try some: PART: cart or part? FIND: pine or mine? FIND: find or mind? PORK: fork or pork? POKE: joke or poke?
9. Distribute materials to make P booklets. Allow students to color booklets, for 5-7 minutes, and then encourage them to take the book home to finish coloring for homework and practice /p/ with their parents. (Printable materials for booklet below, under “activity booklet materials”)
9. For assessment, distribute the worksheet. Students are to complete the partial spellings, using my example on the board as a model, and color the pictures that begin with P. Call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #6 and #8. Use their answers to assess whether or not students have grasped that P represents /p/.
Reference:
http://robyn9211.wix.com/robynhunter#!emergent-literacy/c1pey
Herzog, Brad, and Bruce Langton. P Is for Putt: A Golf Alphabet. Chelsea, MI:
Sleeping Bear, 2005. Print.
Assessment worksheet:
http://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/p-begins2.htm
Activity booklet materials:
http://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/learning-letters/ib-book-p.htm
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