Emergent Literacy Lesson
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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 (dog panting) 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 pencils, Dr. Suess’s Horton Hears a Who! (Random House: 1954), word cards with HUFF, HIT, LAD, HALL, BED, HATE, assessment worksheets (URL below).
Procedures: 1. Say: Our alphabet is like a secret code- until you learn what all of the letters stand for! Every letter stands for a different sound, and we learn these sounds by remembering how our mouths move when we say the letter. Today we’re going to learn to pick out the /h/ sound! We spell /h/ with the letter H. /h/ sounds like when you take your dog out for a walk and he gets tired, so he starts panting!
2. Let’s all pretend to be tired dogs, /h/, /h/, /h/. [Hold up your hands like dog paws and make a tired face] Can you feel where your lips are? When we say /h/, we push our lips forward just a little and puff out air.
3. Now, I’ll show you how to find /h/ in words! Let’s take the word hunt. I’m going to stretch hunt out very slowly and you listen for the panting dog. Hh-uuh-nt. Slower: hhh-uuu-nnn-t. When do you hear it? Right at the beginning right? I feel the puff of air at the start of the word. I feel the /h/ in hunt.
4. Let me tell you a story [tongue tickler tale]: Henry woke up late this morning and had to skip breakfast to get to school on time. All through class, Henry’s tummy rumbled and rumbled and his teacher told him, “Keep it down!”. Henry told his teacher, “I can’t help it, I’m just hungry!”. Finally, it was lunch time! When Henry and his class sat down at their lunch table, Henry realized- oh no! In a rush to get to school on time, he had left his lunch at home! Henry’s tummy rumbled again and he was so sad. Henry’s friend Heidi saw how sad he was and said, “Here Henry, my mom packed me an extra ham sandwich!” Henry’s face lit up, and he thanked his friend. Hungry Henry was happy to have Heidi’s ham. Everyone say that with me: “Hungry Henry was happy to have Heidi’s ham”. Let’s say it three times together. Now, say it again, but stretch the /h/ at the beginning of each /h/ word. “Hhhhenry was hhhhappy to hhhhave Hhhheidi’s hhhham.” Let’s try it again, and this time we’ll chop the /h/ off of the words: “/h/ enry was /h/ appy to /h/ ave /h/ eidi’s /h/ am.”
5. [Students take out primary paper and pencil] We use the letter H to spell /h/. Capital H looks like two puzzle pieces stuck together. Let’s write lowercase h. Start at the rooftop and draw a line all the way down to the sidewalk. Then go back up your first line and at the fence, make a curve back down to the sidewalk. I will look at everyone’s h and when I give you a thumbs up, I want you to make nine more just like your first one!
6. Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /h/ in hot or cold? Hand or foot? Sad or happy? Hatch or lay? Cow or hog? Say: Let’s see if you can pick out the /h/ in some words. Show your dog-tired face if you hear /h/: hat, cloak, the, how, big, hit, heart, net, hockey.
7. Say: Now, we’re going to look at a book with lots of /h/’s. This book is called Horton Hears a Who, by Dr. Seuss. [Give booktalk: This book is about an elephant named Horton, who one day stumbles upon a flower. The flower starts talking to him, so Horton knows that something crazy is going on! Horton finds out that there is a town full of Who’s living on this flower, and that they need protection from all the bad things that can happen to a flower in the jungle of Nool! Will Horton be able to protect these Who’s that he heard?]. Everytime you hear the /h/, I want you to show me your dog-tired face. Read the book, drawing out every /h/. After the book, ask students to come up with more words that begin with H. After they come up with words, have students come up with a name for their own town living on a flower, like Happy House or Holly Haville. Each student will write the name of their town with inventive spelling and draw a picture of their little town. Display their work.
8. Show HUFF and model how to decide if it is huff or puff: the H tells me to pant like a dog, /h/, so this word is hhh-uff, huff. You try: HIT: hit or kit? LAD: had or lad? HALL: hall or ball? BED: head or bed? HATE: hate or late?
9. Assessment: distribute the worksheet. Students circles the Hs among the different letters and fonts, practice writing Hs, and circle the pictures of things that begin with H. While the class is working, call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #8.
Reference: Horton Hears a Who! New York: Random House. 1954. Print.
Assessment Worksheet: https://www.awellspringofworksheets.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/abc-worksheets-letter-h.jpg
Dog Tired with H
