Ms. Vavala's
Lesson Designs
Blowing Big Bubbles with Baby
Emergent Literacy Design
Rationale: This lesson will help children identify /b/, the phoneme represented by B. Students will learn to recognize /b/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation (baby’s mouth blowing big bubbles) and the letter symbol B, practice finding /b/ in words, apply phoneme awareness with /b/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.
Materials: Primary paper and pencil; chart with “Bob brushed his bird before Betty baked”; drawing paper and crayons, A Bug, a Bear, and a Boy (David McPhail, 1998); word cards with BIG, BOX, LOCK, BEND, CART, and BARN; assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /b/ (URL below).
Procedures:
1. Say: Our written language is a secret cod. The tricky part is learning what letters stand for—the mouth moves we make as we say words. Today we’re going to work on spotting the mouth move /b/. We spell /b/ with letter B. B looks like a baby with it’s lips held together and /b/ sounds like the baby blowing a big bubble, bbbbbb (exaggerate when saying “bbbbbbbbb”).
2. Let’s pretend we are a baby and trying to blow a bubble, /b/, /b/, /b/. [Pantomime blowing a bubble like a baby] Notice where your lips start? (Point to mouth closed; lips are shut and pushed together). When we say /b/, we start with our mouth closed and then open it as we “push” the b out.
3. Let me show you how to find /b/ in the word cab. I’m going to stretch cab out in super slow motion and listen for my bubble blowing noise. C-a-a-ab. Slower: C-a-a-a-bbb. There it was! I felt my lips pushed together and closed. I can feel the bubble being blown with /b/ in cab.
4. Let’s try a tongue twister [on chart]. “Bob brushed his bird before Betty baked.” Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /b/ at the beginning of the words. “Bbbbob bbbrushed his bbbird bbbefore Bbbetty bbbaked.” Try it again, and this time break the /b/ off the word: “/b/o/b/ /b/rushed his /b/ird /b/efore /b/etty /b/aked.”
5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil] We use letter B to spell /b/. Capital B looks like a caterpillar standing on its back legs. Let’s write the lowercase letter b. Start just below the rooftop, straighten out all the way to the sidewalk, come back up to the fence, make half a circle from the fence and curve all the way back down to the sidewalk. I want to see everybody’s b. After I put a smile on it, I want you to make nine more just like it.
6. Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /b/ in small or big? Blue or red? Floor or bench? Table or chair? Grab or pull? Say: Let’s see if you can spot the mouth move /b/ in some words. Blow a big bubble like a baby if you hear /b/: Cat, bark, bunny, grow, blink, drew, about, at, broom?
7. Say: “Let’s look at an alphabet book.”
Booktalk: A tiny bug, a small boy, and a big bear are all friends and spend the day together doing activities that they each enjoy. How can three creatures so different in size play together without any problems? How does the bear not crush the bug and the boy? You’ll have to read to find out! After having read book, have students think of other animals/objects that start with the letter /b/. Have student write what they chose and draw a picture to go with it. Display their work.
8. Show BIG and model how to decide if it is big or dig: The B tells me to blow a bubble like a baby and close my lips to push the /b/ out, so this word is bbbb-i-g, big. You try some: BOX: box or fox? LOCK: lock or mock? BEND: bend or mend? CART: cart or dart? BARN: barn or yarn?
9. For assessment, distribute the worksheet. Students are to complete the partial spellings and color the pictures that begin with B. Call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #8.
References:
1) (Book) McPhail, David. A Bug, A Bear, and a Boy. Scholastic, Inc. 1998. Print.
2) (EL Design Information) Murray, Bruce. Making Sight Words. Linus Publications, Inc. 2012
3) Assessment Worksheet: http://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/b-begins2.htm