EMERGENT LITERACY LESSON DESIGN

Rationale:

This lesson will help children identify /r/, the phoneme represented by R.

Students will learn to recognize /r/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation (roller coaster) and the letter symbol R, practice finding /r/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /r/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.

Materials:

Primary paper and pencil; cart with “Rob rides the risky roller coaster”; drawing paper and crayons; Animal Stackers (Hyperion Books, 2005); word cards with RAM, RUB, MAT, RAKE, HATE, and ROCK; assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /r/ (link 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 /r/. We spell /r/ with letter R. R looks like a roller coaster, and when we say /r/, we hear the rrrrumble of the roller coaster.

2. Lets pretend to ride a roller coaster, rrrrr. Notice where your tongue goes? (the back of your mouth). When we say /r/, we pull our tongue back and form a circular shape with our lips.

Ff-o-3. Let me show you how to find /r/ in the word fort. I’m going to stretch fort out in super slow motion and listen for the of the roller coaster. rrrr-t. Slower: Ffff-o-o-rrrrr-tt. There it was! I felt my tongue in the back of my mouth and clenched my teeth. I can feel the rrrrumble fort. /r/ in rrrrrumble

4. Lets try a tongue twister [on chart].  “Rob rides the risky roller coaster.” Everbody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /r/ at the beginning of the words. “Rrrrob rrrrides the rrrrrisky rrrroller coaster.” Try it again, and this time break it off the word “/r/ob  /r/ide the /r/isky /r/oller coaster.”

5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We us letter R to spell /r/. Capital R looks like a roller coaster. Lets write the lowercase letter r. Start on the fence. Draw a line down to the sidewalk. Pick up your pencil and place it on your line halfway between the sidewalk and the fence. Draw half a rainbow up towards the fence and stop. I want to see everybody’s r. Once I check you off I want you to make 8 more just like it.

6. Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /r/ in cart or road? Rain or shine? Hat or hair? Drop or fall? Bug or rug? Say “Lets see if you can spot the mouth move /r/ in some words. Put your hands in the air like your riding the roller coaster if you hear /r/: The, robber, ran, away, right, as, the, cops, rolled, up.

7. Say: “Let’s look at an alphabet book. There are all types of animals listed in this book, one for every letter of the alphabet! Lets see what types of animals are listed in this book Animal Stackers!" Read page 21, drawing out /r/. Ask children if they can think of other words with /r/. Have them raise your hands like you are on a roller coaster whenever you hear /r/ in any of the other listed animals names. Ask them to think of other animals that they book could of said that start with R. Then have each student write his or her animal with invented spelling and draw a picture of it. Display their work

8. Show RAM and model how to decide if it is ram or ham: The R is the of the roller coaster, /r/, so this word is rrrYou try some: RUB: rub or tub? MAT: mat or rat? RAKE: lake or rake? HATE: hate or rate? ROCK: lock or rock?-am, ram. rrrrumble

9. For assessment, distribute the worksheet. Students are to complete the partial spellings and color the pictures that begin with R. Call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #8.