Rationale: Learning to recognize phonemes will help students recognize words in text. Recognizing words is important to building sight vocabulary, which is important for reading. This lesson will help students identify /b/, the phoneme represented by B. Students will learn the sound /b/ in words by learning a representation of B (beating a drum makes the sound), a tongue tickler, a phoneme picture, an alphabet book, and other activities involving /b/=B. The end goal will be for students to quickly identify the sound and sight of B.
Materials:
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Tongue Tickler phrase on a poster: “Bob’s bunny bites bread”
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Phoneme Picture (attached below)
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Word cards: Bog, Big, Belt, Bulk, Bake
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Primary paper & pencil
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Eating the Alphabet by Lois Elhert
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Straws for drumsticks
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Crayons
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Practice Activity: assessment sheet
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Procedures:
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“To understand the English language, we must learn what each letter stands for. To do this we can see what sounds the mouth makes when we say a letter. Today we are going to work on saying /b/. We spell this sound with the letter B. When you make the sound /b/ it sounds like you are beating a drum.”
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“Everyone say b-b-b-b-b. Let’s pretend we are hitting a drum. Notice how you make the sound /b/ when you are beating on the drum. Use your straws as drum sticks to beat the desk, which is your drum, when you say b-b-b-b” Listen to this phrase: The boy buys butter and bread. (Say it slowly) The b-b-b-o-y b-b-b-u-y-s b-b-b-u-t-t-e-r a-n-d b-b-b-r-e-a-d. Now lets say it all together.
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“Watch me find /b/ in the word bat. I am going to stretch out the word and show you how each time I say /b/ it sounds like I am hitting a drum. B-b-b-b-a-t.” (repeat with words that have b in the middle and end: baby & club)
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“Now we are going to stretch out words together. So Bob is a little boy and he has a pet Bunny. His bunny's favorite food is bread. Our tongue tickler is “Bob’s bunny bites bread.” Now we are going to say the tongue tickler and stretch out each B, using the drumsticks (straws) to hit the drum (table) on the each /b/ “Bbbbbobbb’s bbbbunny bbbbites bbbread.” This time I want each of you to hit hard with your drumsticks and say the /b/ very loud and clear. /b/o/b/’s /b/unny /b/ites /b/read.”
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Ask students to determine whether they hear /b/ in big or small, bite or kite, job or jog, labor or ladder. “Raise your drumsticks if you think you hear /b/ in big…now raise them if you think you hear /b/ in small.” (repeat with other words)
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“Now we are going to look at an alphabet book that tells about fruits and veggies that starts with the letter B and makes the /b/sound.” (read pages 4-5 in Eating the Alphabet by Lois Ehlert)
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“We are going to practice writing our upper and lower case Bs.” [model how to do both]. “Now I want everyone to 5 upper case B’s and 5 lowercase b’s. When you finish that write your favorite fruit or vegetable that starts with a B on your paper.”
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“We are going to look at some more words that have the letter B in them.” Show them the words cards (see materials) and demonstrate the /b/ sound. For the last two, have the students partner up and say the words to each other.
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For assessment give each student the worksheet. Students are to beat their drum sticks on the table for each word that has the letter B sound /b/ in it. The ones they hit their drumsticks for, they also circle with a crayon. I will check students off when they have completed the sheet correctly.
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References:
Brush your teeth with “F” by Dr. Bruce Murray http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/sightings/murrayel.html
Assessment worksheet (The Letter B sheet): (https://www.education.com/slideshow/things-that-start-with/)
Ehlert, Lois. “Eating the Alphabet.” By Lois Ehlert, www.goodreads.com/book/show/843019.Eating_the_Alphabet.
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