Miss Fox's Reading Lessons

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 (dripping water) 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.

Materials:

Primary paper; pencil; crayons; chart with "Patty’s party was planned for a princess in pink.” Princess Pigtoria and the Pea (Pamela Duncan Edwards, 2010); word cards with pan, ran, paw, pool, fool, play, day, pope, float, peak, beak; assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /p/ (URL below).

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 /p/. We spell /p/ with letter P. P looks like a droplet of water, and /p/ sounds like the platter a droplet of water makes when hitting the surface.

2. Let's pretend to platter a drop of water, /p/, /p/, /p/. [Pantomime a drop of water hitting the surface] Notice where your mouth is? (Open). When we say /p/, we pop our lips open.  

3. Let me show you how to find /p/ in the word map. I'm going to stretch map out in super slow motion and listen for droplet of water. Mmm-a-ppp. Slower: Mmm-aaa-ppp There it was! I felt my lips pop open. I can feel the water platter /p/ in map.

4. Let's try a tongue twister [on chart]. Patty’s party was planned for a princess in pink. Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /p/ at the beginning of the words. Pppppatty’s ppppparty was ppppplanned for a ppppprincess in pppppink. Try it again, and this time break it off the word: /P/atty’s /p/arty was /p/lanned for a /p/rincess in /p/ink.

5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We use letter P to spell /p/. Capital P looks like a water droplet. Let's write the lowercase letter p. Start at the fence and make a straight line and stop in the ditch. Now, put your pencil on your line at the fence and start making a circle and stop it at the sidewalk on the line you drew. I want to see everybody's p. After I put a smile on it, I want you to make nine more just like it.