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Emergent Literacy Lesson Design 

Rex & Rover Growling with R

 

Emergent Literacy Design

 By: Anna Knowling

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Rationale: This lesson will help children recognize /r/, the phoneme represented by r. Students will learn to identify /r/ in common        language by learning a meaningful representation (dog growling “ruff ruff”) and the letter symbol r, practice finding /r/ in words and    applying phoneme awareness with /r/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.

 

  Materials: Primary paper and pencil; chart with “Roger ran round the river.”; drawing paper and crayons; Dr. Seuss ABC (Random House,   1963); word cards with ROT, FEET, REP, RAN, PORK and ROPE; assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /r/ (URL below).

 

  Procedure:

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 explore and work on spotting the mouth move /r/. We spell /r/ with letter R. R looks like a when you grit your teeth together and /r/ sounds like a dog growling (“ruff”).

 

2. Let’s pretend to grit our teeth together, /r/, /r/, /r/. (Pantomime gritting teeth) Notice where your teeth and tongue are? (Tongue twists to roof of mouth. Blow air with voice box). When we say /r/, we curl our tongue up to the roof of our mouths and turn our voice box on.

 

3. Let me show you how to find /r/ in the word cart. I’m going to stretch cart out in super slow motion and listen for my clenching teeth. Ccc-a-rrrtt. Slower: Ccc-aaa-rrrrt. There it was! I felt my tongue twist and touch the roof of my mouth and blow air. I felt my teeth gritting /r/ in cart.

 

4. Let’s try a tongue twister [on chart]. “Roger ran round the river.” Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again and this time stretch the /r/ at the beginning of the words. “RRRoger RRRan RRRound the RRRiver.” Try it again and this time break it off the word: “/r/oger /r/an /r/ound the /r/iver.”

 

5. [Have students take our primary paper and pencil]. We use letter R to spell /r/. Capital R looks like two lollipops, with one on top of the other. Let’s write the lowercase letter r. Start at the corner. Straighten it out all the way down to the sidewalk and come back up to the corner making a little c. I want to see everybody’s r. After I put a smile on it, I want you to make nine more just like it.

 

6. Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /r/ in train or fun? Ran or Fan? Plane or Rain? Cart or Wheel? Ride or Bike? Say: let’s see if you can spot the mouth move /r/ in some words. Clench your teeth if you hear /r/: Randy rode in a red rusty racecar that roared down the road.

 

7. Say: “Let’s look at an alphabet book. Booktalk: Dr. Seuss tells us a funny story creature whose names starts with R. Ask children if they can think of other words with /r/. Ask them to make up a silly creature name like Riffer-reffer-reff. Then have each student write their silly name with invented spelling and draw a picture of their silly creature. Display their work.

 

8. Show ROT and model how to decide if it is rot or tot. The R tells me to grit my teeth, /r/, so this word if rrr-ot, rot. You try some: RING: RING or DING? PIPE: RIPE or PIPE? RAW: RAW or SAW? NIGHT: RIGHT or NIGHT? FORK: DORK or FORK?

 

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.

 

  Reference: 

 (Book) https://play.google.com/store/books/details? id=PK3xAwAAQBAJ&source=productsearch&utm_source=HA_Desktop_US&utm_medium=SEM&utm_campaign=PLA&pcampaignid=MK TAD0930BO1&gclid=CLT2jcvs5cMCFRAjgQodGZgAJQ&gclsrc=aw.ds

 

 (Lesson) http://karliembergamini.wix.com/bergamini-lessons#!growl-like-a-dog-with-r/c1f0h

 

 (Image) http://williamson-labs.com/images/a-bark_r-0.gif

 

  Assessment Worksheets: 

http://www.education.com/worksheet/article/consonant-sounds-r-blends/

 

http://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/r-ends2.htm

 

 

 

 

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