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Emergent Literacy Design: Pop goes the Popcorn

 

By: Adrienne Hill 

 

 

Rationale: The goal of my lesson is to have the students identify /p/ which is the phoneme represented by P.

They will be taught to be able to recognize /p/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation (popping popcorn) ,a symbol for

the letter, practice finding the letter/p/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /p/ in phonetic cue reading by analyzing

rhyming words from beginning letters. 

 

Materials: 

-Pencil 

-Primary paper 

-Poster with the tongue tickler “Peter popped popcorn for his perfect party”

-The Princess and the Pig by Jonathan Emmett

-Cards with words: PIG, BALL, PINK, SINK, SELL, POT, TEAR, and PAN

-Assessment worksheet that have pictures that represent /p/ 

 

Procedures:1. Say: Words are like a secret code. It is hard to learn what letters stand for. The mouth moves different ways depending on what we say. Today, we are going to learn how the mouth moves for /p/. The letter P is used to represent the sound /p/. P makes a popping noice like we are making delicious popcorn. 

 

2. Say: Let’s pretend that we are making delicious popcorn and every time the popcorn pops we move our fingers out from our fist like our hand is popping. Make sure to say /p/ each time you do this. Pay attention to what your mouth is doing when you make the sound /p/. You put your lips together and when you release air pushes through your mouth and slightly through your teeth. 

 

3. Say: Let me show you how to find /p/ in the word cape. We are going to do it very slowly so we hear the pop in the /p/. CCC-aaa-ppp-eee. There it is!! Did you hear your the pop your mouth made as you said the word!

 

4. Say: Let’s try a tongue twister from our chart and you're going to repeat it for me. “Peter popped popcorn for his perfect party”.Remember to make the popping noise when you hear the P. Now I want you to stretch out the /p/ when you hear it in the words. “PPPeter popped pppopcorn for his ppperfect ppparty”. Let’s try it one more time and this time break the P off of the word. “/p/ eter /p/ opped /p/ opcorn for his /p/ erfect /p/ arty.”

 

5. Say: I want everyone to take out some paper and a pencil. We are going to practice writing the letter P. P looks like we are cooking popcorn in a pan. Let’s start by writing an uppercase P. Start at the rooftop and draw a line down to the ditch. Then start at the rooftop again and go around to the middle, making a piece of popcorn. Now let’s make a lowercase P. I want you to start at the fence and draw a line down to the ditch. Then you start at the fence again and go around at the middle, making a piece of popcorn. Now I want you to try writing those five more times. 

 

6. Say: Now we are going to play a fun word game. I am going to say two different words and I want you to tell me which word has the sound /p/ in it. Do you hear /p/ in place or face? Map or cat? Pillow or blanket? Now let’s see if you can spot the mouth move /p/ in some different words. Pop the popcorn if you hear /p/. Park, boy, puppy, grape, run. 

 

7. Say: Do you guys like pigs? Do you hear the /p/ in the word pig? We are going to read a funny story about a princess named Priscilla who changes places with a farmers pig. Priscilla is so sad because she is used to living a fun and fancy life as a princess. But will she ever change back to the princess? Let’s read the book to find out? Remember that while we are reading this book that you pop your popcorn whenever you hear the /p/. 

 

8. Show PAN and model how you know it is pan and not fan. The P tells me to pop the popcorn, /p/, so the word pan is ppp-an. Why don’t we try some other ones: PIG: pig or ball? PINK: pink or sink? POT: sell or pot? PAN: tear or pan?

 

9. For assessment I will distribute the worksheet. In this worksheet the students will match the three pigs with three different items that start with the letter P. 

 

References: Lauren Muller, Poppin’ P’s. http://laurenmuller96.wixsite.com/teacherwebpage/emergent-literacy-lesson

Emmett, Jonathan, and Poly Bernatene. The princess and the pig. New York, Scholastic, 2013.

Assessment worksheet: http://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/p-begins1.htm

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