Emergent Literacy Design
By Leah Steiner
order for children to learn to read and spell words, they need the
insight that letters stand for phonemes and that spellings map out the
in spoken words. Before children can match letters to phonemes,
to recognize the phonemes. This lesson will help children to
= /A/. They will learn to recognize a_e = /A/ in
words by learning a meaningful representation and the letter symbol,
practice applying a_e = /A/.
“James and the
Good Day,” Carson CA: Educational Insights, 1990.
Snake and Plane
with a picture of a snake or plane and a_e = /A/ on them.
various pictures of /A/ sounding objects: egg, face, bed, cake, wave,
plane, bat, snake, gate, crab, lake, grass, skate, rake, plate.
1. Introduce the lesson by explaining that
made up of individual sounds. “Each word is made up of many
sounds and when we
the different sounds they make different
words. Today we are going to work on sounding out words with a_e
and making words
- Tell students: “Think
about going to a baseball game and imagine different things that go on
at the game. Think again about the /A/ sound that we are
learning about. Can anyone think of words to describe baseball
that make the /A/ sound?” (Ex. Players chase the
ball, there is a first, second and third base, it is
called a game, players on the same team
work together, your jersey has your name on the back,
sometimes players pretend to throw the ball and this is called a fake,
they rake the red clay before every game,
sometimes players are late to the game, you have team mates,
sometimes you have to be brave when the ball pops
up). These are all great examples of the /A/ sound. Let’s
pretend we are throwing a baseball and while we throw our baseball, we
are going to drag it out and say bAAAseball. Great Job!!!
- “Let’s try a tongue
twister. “Jake hates to race because he makes a funny face.
Now let’s try it again and stretch out the /A/ sound. JAAAke
hAAAtes to rAAAce because he mAAAkes a funny fAAAce. Good
job. One more time!”
- “Now take out a piece
of primary paper and your pencil. Let’s practice writing
lowercase a and e. (On the board write an a,
then go through the following steps: for lowercase a, you start
under the fence then you go around and touch the sidewalk, around and
straight down. Then write an e, while explaining the following steps to
make an e: for lowercase e get in the center of the space below the
fence, go toward the door (right), up to touch the fence around and up.
I want to see everyone’s a and e. After I place a
snake or plane sticker on it, make a row of a’s and a row of
e’s just like the first one.”
- “We are going to
listen for /A/ in some words that I am about to say.”
(Pass out index cards with snake and plane pictures on them.)
“When I say a word and you hear /A/ I want everyone to hold up their
snake or plane card. If you don’t hear /A/ then be sure to keep
your cards down.” Use the words lace, cab, get, apple, cake,
sad, trade, hot, skate, jaw, sit, grate.
- Read “ James and the Good
Day.” Tell the students to hold up their snake or plane card
every time a word with the /A / sound is read.
- For assessment,
distribute the picture page and help students name each picture.
Students will then circle the pictures with the a_e = /A/ in their
Eldridge, J. Lloyd (1995).
“Teaching Decoding in Holistic Classrooms.” New Jersey: Merrill, 1995, pp.50-70.
“James and the Good
CA: Educational Insights,
Questions? Email me!