Gulp a Gallon with G
Emergent Literacy Design
Rationale:
This lesson will help children identify /g/, the phoneme represented by G. Students will learn to recognize /g/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation (gulping a gallon) and the letter symbol G, practice finding /g/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /g/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words form begging letters.
Materials:
-
Primary paper and pencil
-
Char with “Gale’s great glass globe glows green”
-
Drawing paper
-
Crayons
-
My “g” Book (Scholastic Inc., 1984)
-
Word cards with GET, GOLD, BUY, GATE, GAME and BOAT.
-
Assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /g/. (URL below)
Procedures:
-
Say: Our written language is a secret code. The hard part is learning what letters stand for- the mouth moves we make to say words. Today we are going to work on spotting the mouth move /g/. We spell /g/ with letter G. G looks like a Gallon of milk, and /g/ sounds like you’re gulping the milk.
-
Let’s pretend to gulp our gallons, /g/, /g/, /g/. [Pantomime gulping a gallon] Notice where your tongue is? (Point to the roof of your mouth). When we say /g/, we push the back of our tongue to the back of our mouth and push it off.
-
Let me show you how to find /g/ in the word flag. I’m going to stretch flag out in super slow motion and listen for my gulping. Ff-ll-a-a-gg. Slower: Fff-lll-a-a-a-ggg. There it was! I felt my tongue touch the back of my mouth. I can feel the gulping /g/ in flag.
-
Let’s try a tongue twister [on chat]. “Gale’s great glass globe glows green.” Everybody say it three times together. Now sy it again, and this time, stretch the /g/ at the beginning of the words. “Gggale’s gggreat ggglass ggglobe ggglows gggreen.” Try it again, and this time break it off /g/ off the words: “/g/ ale’s /g/ reat /g/ lass /g/ lobe /g/ lows /g/ reen.”
-
[Have students take out primary paper and pencil] We use letter G to spell /g/. Capital G looks like a Gallon of milk. Let’s write the lowercase letter g. Start at the fence and start making a circle down to the sidewalk. Then draw a line with a curve (like a fish hook) below the sidewalk. I want to see everybody’s g. After I put a smiley face on it, I want you to make 9 more just like it.
-
Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you here /g/ in yard or grass? gate o. fence? head or face? cat or dog? Girl or boy? Say: Let’s see if you can spot the mouth move /g/ in some words. Gulp your gallon if you here /g/: The, gross, goat, drank, the, girls, Gatorade, after, the, game.
-
Say: “Let’s look at a g book. Gale has a box. She has to find things that begin with the /g/ sound to fill her box. What do you think Gale will find that can go in her box? Let’s look and see how she will fill up her box. Then have each student draw a box on their piece of paper and draw one thing that starts with /g/ that Gale might find. Display their work.
-
Show GET and model how to decide if it is get or let: The G tells me to gulp my gallon, /g/, so this word is ggg-et, get. You try some: GOLD: gold or fold? GATE: late or gate? BUY: buy or guy? GAME: game or lame? BOAT: goat or boat?
-
For assessment, distribute the worksheet. Students are to complete partial spellings and color the pictures that begin with G. Call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #8.
References:
1) Byrne, B., & Fielding-Barnsley, R. (1990). Acquiring the alphabetic principle: A case for teaching recognition of phoneme identity. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82, 805-812.l
2) HumourHub network. (2000). Tongue Twisters from A to Z. http://www.schooljokes.com/tongue_twisters/g.shtml
3) Hohag, J. & Moncure, L. (1984). Scholastic Inc., My “g” Book (My first steps to reading).
Assessment worksheet: http://www.kidzone.ws/prek_wrksht/learning-letters/g.htm
4)Regerenced page: Annamarie Merritt, Gulping With Letter G https://sites.google.com/site/msmerritts1stgradeclass/annamarie-merritt-reasearch-based-reading