Mr. Bolan's Lesson Designs

Rationale: This lesson will help children recognize /h/, the phoneme represented by H. Students will learn to recognize /h/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation (dog panting) and the letter symbol H, practice finding /h/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /h/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.

 

Materials: Primary paper and pencil; chart with “Harvey the hairy husky hopped over my head”; drawing paper and crayons; Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who (Random House 1954); word cards with HOG, BIB, HEAT, HILT, CLAM, HARP; assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /h/ (URL Below)

 

Procedures: 1. Say: “Our written language is like a code that must be decoded. However, learning what letters stand for can be tricky. We can find out what each letter stands for by observing the mouth moves we make as we say words. Today we are going to work on spotting the mouth move /h/. We spell /h/ with the letter H. Dogs make the sound /h/ after they run around and play fetch. [Mimic panting like a dog]

 

2. “Let’s pretend we are playing fetch with a big golden retriever (act like you are throwing a stick) and the dog is getting tired (panting) /h/ /h/ /h/. Our mouth makes a wide open circle when we say /h/. When you say /h/ you are blowing out air just like a doggy who is panting after fetch.”

 

3. “Now I am going to show you how to find /h/ in the HOG. Listen to me make the panting /h/ sound as I stretch out HOG in slow motion. Hhh-o-g. Slower: Hhhhh-o-o-o-g-g-g. I heard that dog panting /h/! When I said HOG slowly, I could feel my mouth making a wide circle and I could feel the panting /h/ in HOG.”

 

4. “Let’s do our tongue tickler now. “Harvey the hairy husky hopped over my head”. Good job! Now let’s stretch out the /h/ in each word. “Hhharvery the hhhairy hhhusky hhhopped over my hhhead”. Try it again, but this time break it off the word: “/h/ arvey the /h/ airy /h/ usky /h/ opped over my /h/ ead.”

 

5. (Tell students to take out primary paper and pencil) Say: “We use the letter H to spell /h/. A capital H looks like a field goal that football players kick the ball through. Now, let’s write the lowercase letter h. Start at the rooftop and run in a straight line all the way down to the sidewalk. Then, from the sidewalk run a straight line up to the fence and curve back around to the sidewalk. Once I give you a smiley next to your h, I want you to try 8 more times!”

 

6. Call on students to answer and explain their reasoning for their answer. Do you /h/ in hop or skip? Heart or Brain? Heal or fix? Say: “Now, who can spot the open mouth /h/ in these words? Pretend to pant like a dog if you hear /h/ in any of the following words. “Harold, hates, to, see, happy, hopping, frogs, on, the, house.”

 

7. Say: “Let’s look at Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who. Do we hear the panting /h/ sound in Horton’s name? Yes, we do, we can hear /h/ at the very beginning of his name. We can also hear /h/ in hears and who, but who doesn’t start with an H. It has the consonant cluster wh that sometimes says /h/. This story is about an elephant named Horton who believes there are creatures living on a tiny clover that he found, but everyone thinks he is crazy. Will Horton be able to convince his friends that he’s telling the truth? Let’s read to find out!" Once they’ve read the book have the students create a fun sentence using invented spelling about Horton using words that that start with the /h/ sound. Then, have the students to draw a picture that goes along with their sentence and have them share it with the whole class.

 

8. Show card with the word harp on it. Model how to decide if it is harp or carp: “The h tells me to pant /h/ /h/ /h/ like a dog, so this word is hhh-arp, harp. Now you try some:  hog: hog or bog? heat: heat or seat? bib: bib or hid? hilt: hilt or wilt? clam: clam or ham”?

 

9. For assessment, distribute the worksheet and crayons. Students are to color the pictures on the worksheet that begin with the letter H. Call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #8.

 

References: Sanford, Lindsay. Running Hard with H: Emergent Literacy https://sites.google.com/site/sanfordreadinglesson/home/running-hard-with-h

 

Picture: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gvR2baQ7XhA/T7Aj5zDIb_I/AAAAAAAACkk/BXG1kUOc1EY/s1600/Panting+Golden.jpg

 

Assessment Worksheet: http://www.tlsbooks.com/letterh_1.pdf

 

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Questions? Concerns? Email me at gjb0002@auburn.edu