Emergent Literacy Design: Bounce Your Ball with B
Rationale: This lesson will help children identify /b/, the phoneme represented by B.
Students will learn to recognize /b/ in spoken words by learning a sound analogy (bouncing a ball) and the letter symbol B, practice finding /b/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /b/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.
Materials: Primary paper and pencil; chart with “Billy batted his blue baseball into the blue pool”; drawing paper and crayons; Dr. Seuss’s ABC (Random House,1963); word flash cards with BALL, BASK, BLUE, BEST, BACK, and BABY.
Procedures: Say: Our written language is secret code. The difficult part is learning what letter stand for- the mouth moves we make as we say words. Today we are going to work on spotting the mouth move /b/. We spell /b/ with the letter B. /b/ looks like a stick with a circle on the end of it, and /b/ sounds like basketball bouncing on the ground.
2. Let’s pretend to bounce a basketball, /b/, /b/, /b/. [Pantomime bouncing a basketball] Notice where your lips and your teeth are? Your top and bottom teeth are apart. Your lips are pressed together.
3. Let me show you how to find /b/ in the word rub. I am going to stretch rub out in super slow motion and listen for my basketball to bounce. Rrr-u—u-ub. Slower: R-u-u-u-b. There it was! I felt my teeth become far apart and my lips touch. Basketball bouncing /b/ is in rub.
4. Let’s try a tongue tickler [on chart]. Billy has a blue baseball and bat that he is really excited to use in his baseball game. It is his turn to the bat. He goes up to the mound with his blue bat and knocks his blue ball out of the field all the way into the blue pool in the park! Here is our tickler: “Billy hit his blue baseball into the blue pool.” Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /b/ sound at the beginning of the words that start with b. “Bbbbilly hit his bbblue bbbasebbball into the bbblue pool.” Try it again and this time break it off the word: “/b/illy hit his /b/lue /b/aseball into the /b/lue pool.”
5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We use letter b to spell /b/. Lowercase b looks like a basketball with a stick on. Let’s write the lower case b. Draw a straight line, and then draw a circle at the bottom of your line that comes half way up the line. I want to see everyone’s b. After I put a smiley face on, I want you to make nine more just like it.
6. Call on students to answer: Do you hear /b/ in back or front? Buzz or hum? Box or square? Bone or skin? Berry or fruit? Bat your ball if you hear /b/: The, big, black, bug, flew to the big, black, bush.
7. Say: “Let’s look at an alphabet book. Dr. Seuss tells us several words that begin with /b/. Which words is he going to tell us? Read page 3, drawing out /b/. Ask the students if they can think of other words that start with /b/. Ask them to make up a silly creature name. Then have each student write their silly name with invented spelling and draw a picture of their creature. Display their work to the class.
8. Show BEST and model how to decide if it is best or nest: The B tells me to bat my ball, /b/, so this word is bbb-est. You try some: BEE: bee or see? BEET: beet or feet? BIND: bind or mind? BARK: bark or park? BAKE: bake or make?
9. For assessment, distribute the worksheet. Students color the pictures that begin with B. Call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step number 8.
Reference: https://julieclark216.wixsite.com/ctrdlessondesigns/emergent-design
Assessment Worksheet: https://www.superteacherworksheets.com/phonics-beginningsounds/letter-b_WFFMM.pdf?up=1466611200
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