Ms. Carly's

Rationale: It is important that children understand and develop an awareness of phonemes in order to become successful readers. This lesson is to help students learn /l/, the phoneme represented by the letter L. Through this lesson, students will learn to recognize /l/ in spoken words and written language. They will do this by learning a memorable representation of the phoneme (putting one hand on their chest and one out in front of them like an opera singer) and the letter symbol L. They will also practice finding /l/ in words and apply phoneme awareness with /l/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.

 

Materials: Primary paper and pencil; poster with “Lauren loves large, lovable, licking Labradors”; white boards and markers; Max’s ABC (Puffin Books, 2008); phonetic cue cards with the words: LAKE, HATE, LIKE, KITE, LEAP, and FAME; assessment worksheet coloring the pictures with the words that begin with /l/ (URL below).

 

Procedures:

1. Say: It’s important for us to figure out what letters stand for so that we can recognize words. Today we are learning /l/, and the mouth movement that goes with it. We use the letter L to represent /l/. Today we are going to be opera singers because /l/ sounds like an opera singer singing a note.

2. Pretend you are about to hit a high note in opera and sing, /l/, /l/, /l/. [Pantomime opera singing] Notice where the tip of your tongue is? (Touching the back of your front teeth). When we say /l/, we let the air flow out the sides of our tongues.

3. I will show you how to find /l/ in the word club. I will stretch club out very slowly and you listen for the woman singing opera. Cc-ll-ub. Slower: Ccc-lll-u-ub. I felt my tongue touch the back of my teeth and blow air around the sides! I can hear the woman sing opera with /l/ in club.

4. Now we will try a tongue tickler [written on poster]. Lauren loves animals of all kinds. One day Lauren went to the pet store and saw two big Labrador Retrievers. They started to lick her on her face, and she began to laugh because “Lauren loves large, lovable, licking, Labradors.” Everyone say the tongue tickler at the end three times together. Now we will say it again, but this time we will sing the /l/ at the beginning of the words. “Lllauren llloves lllarge, lllovable, lllicking Lllabradors.” Now we will say it one last time, but this time we will break off the /l/ by singing the /l/ and then cutting off the note before we say the rest of the word. “/l/ auren /l/ oves /l/ arge, /l/ ovable, /l/ icking /l/ abradors.”

5. Now take out your primary paper and pencil. We are going to learn how to write the letter L that makes the /l/ sound. We are going to write a lowercase l, which looks like a long stick. We start at the rooftop and draw a straight line all the way down to the sidewalk. Once I come check everyone’s l, I want you to make nine more l’s beside the one you just did.

6. Say: If you know the answer, raise your hand and tell me how you got it: Do you hear /l/ in the word luck or duck? Apple or orange? Black or white? Leg or foot? Clock or cook? Say: Let’s see if you can spot the mouth move /l/ in some words. Sing opera when if you hear /l/: The, little, lake, is, left, of, the, lady, looking, lovely.

7. Say: “Let’s look at an alphabet book. Have you ever been bitten by an ant? Well, in this book, a bunny named Max gets ants in his pants! He and his sister, Ruby, try everything they know to do to get the ants out of Max’s pants. Can you guess a way they try to get the ants out?” Read the page with L on it, drawing out the /l/. Ask children if they can think of other words with /l/. Ask them to come up with ways to get the ants out of Max’s pants with words that start with /l/ like leap or lift his pants leg up. Then have each student write their idea with invented spelling and draw a picture of Max trying to get the ants out on the whiteboard. Have students walk around to see what others’ ideas were.

8. Show the card with the word LAKE and model for the students how to detect if it is lake or rake: the L reminds me to sing, /l/, like an opera singer, so this word is lll-ake, lake. HATE: hate or late? LIKE: like or bike? KITE: kite or lite? LEAP: leap or reap? FAME: fame or lame?

9. For assessment, I will have the students complete the short worksheet. Students are to complete the partial spellings and color the pictures that begin with L. Call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #8.

 

References:

 

Adams, Marilyn, Barbara Foorman, Ingvar Lundberg, and Terri Beeler. "Phonemic Awareness in Young Children." Reading Rockets. Web. 16 Sept. 2015. <http://www.readingrockets.org/article/phonemic-awareness-young-children>.

 

Murray, B. (2012). Making Sight Words: Teaching Word Recognition from Phoneme Awareness to Fluency. Ronkonkoma, NY: Linus Publications.

 

Wells, Rosemary. (2006). Max's ABC. Puffin Books.

 

Assessment worksheet: http://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/l-begins2.htm

 

 

 

Return to Travels index here.