Emergent Literacy

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Rationale: This lesson will help children identify /b/, the phoneme represented by B. Students will learn to recognize /b/ in spoken words by learning analogy (beating heart) 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 "Ben bought bacon for Brad during breakfast.”; drawing paper and crayons; Dr. Seuss's ABC (Random House, 1963); word cards with BET, BENT, BONE, BIN, and BUG; assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /b/ (below).

Procedures:

1. Say: Our written language is a secret code. The tricky part is learning what letters stand for—the mouth moves as we say words. Today we're going to work on spotting the mouth move /b/. We spell /b/ with the letter B. B looks like a heart, and /b/ sounds like a beating heart.

2. Put your hand over your chest and strike repeatedly, while saying /b//b/, /b/ /b/. Notice what your lips do? We touch our lips together and then blow air out when lips come apart.

3. Let me show you how to find /b/ in the word ribs. I’m going to stretch out the word webs in super slow motion and listen for my heartbeat. Www- e-e- bbb- s. There it was! I felt my lips touch then blow air out. Heartbeat /b/ is in webs.

4. Let’s try a tongue tickler [on chart]. Ben went to breakfast before school. He knew his buddy, Brad, was running late that day. Ben decided to buy Brad bacon, so he wasn’t hungry. Here is our tickler: “Ben bought bacon for Brad during breakfast.” Everyone says it 3 times together. Now say it again, and this time break /b/ off the words: “/b/en /b/ought /b/acon for /b/rad during /b/reakfast.

5. [Have students take our primary paper and pencil.] We use letter B to spell /b/. Capital B looks like a sideways heart. Let’s write the lowercase b. Start at the rooftop, draw a straight line down to sidewalk. Then from the sidewalk go up, curving and making a circle that touches the fence, ending back on the line we drew at the sidewalk. I want to see everyone’s b. After I put a heart on it, draw 9 more just like it.

6. Call on students to answer and ask how they knew: Do you hear /b/ in bun or dog? Bed or couch? Book or pencil? Big or little? Let’s see if you can spot the mouth move in /b/ in some words. Beat on your chest if you hear /b/: bunny, computer, Ben, begin, end, blue, hair, broccoli, down, bread

7. Say: “Let’s look at an alphabet book. Dr. Suess tells us about a baby at the barber.” Read page 4, drawing out /b/. Ask students if they can think of other words that start with /b/. Ask them to come up with a new hairstyle name like big bouncy bangs or beautiful bald bandana. Then have each student write their silly hairstyle and draw a picture of the hair. Display their work.

8. Show BIN and model how to decide if it’s bin or fin. The B tells me to beat on my chest, /b/, so the word is bbbb-in, bin. You try some: BET: bet or met? BENT: bent or lent? BUG: bug or hug? BONE: bone or cone?

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 #8.

Click here for worksheet 

 

References

“Free Beginning Sounds Worksheet - Letter b.” Free4Classrooms,        free4classrooms.com/free-beginning-sounds-worksheet-letter-b/.

 

Seuss. Dr. Seuss's A B C. Random House, 1963.

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