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Talk Like a Pirate With R

Emergent Literacy Design

By: Emily James  

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

 

Materials:

  1. Primary paper and pencil

  2. chart with " Ruby rabbit ran rapidly after Rob’s rolling ball"

  3. drawing paper and crayons

  4. Iza Trapani’s Row Row Row Your Boat (Charlesbridge , 1999)

  5. word cards with RAG, RACE, FUN, HAM, RHYME, and RING

  6.  assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /r/ (URL below).

Ÿ Procedures

  1. The trickiest part of our language is learning what letters stand for, and the way the mouth moves as we say words. Today we're going to work on spotting the mouth movement in /r/. We spell /r/ with letter r. r looks like a pirate’s hook and is sounds similar to what pirates sometimes say.

  2. Let's practice being pirates, [ have the kids say “r” and make a pirates hook with their finger] /r/, /r/, /r/.  Notice where your lips and tongue are?  When we say /r/, we pucker are lips and our tongue moves towards the back of our throat.

  3. Let me show you how to find /r/ in the word Pirate I'm going to stretch rake out in super slow motion and listen for the pirate sound. Ppp-iii-rr-ate. Slower: Ppp-i-i-i-r-r-r-ate There it was! I felt my lips pucker and my tongue touch the back of my throat. I can hear the pirate talk /r/ in the word Pirate.

  4. Let's try a tongue twister [on chart]. "Ruby rabbit ran rapidly after Rob’s rolling ball." Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /r/ at the beginning of the words. "Rrruby rrrabbit rrran rrrapidly after Rrrob’s rrrolling ball." Try it again, and this time break it off the word: "/R/uby /r/abbit /r/an /r/apidly after /R/ob’s /r/olling ball.”

  5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We use letter R to spell /r/. Lowercase R looks like a pirate’s hook.  Let's write the lowercase letter r. Start at the fence and make a line down to the sidewalk. Then, from the top of the line, make a pirate’s hook coming down from the fence. I want to see everybody's r. After you get a star, keep practicing till you make ten more just like that first one

  6. Pass out a paper pirate’s hat and eye patch, have the students cut out each and put them on. This way it will help them get into character for the remainder of the lesson.

  7. Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /r/ in rain or sun? wreck or smash? Rat or cat? Car or bike? Large or small? Say: Let's see if you can spot the mouth move /r/ in some words. Make the pirate sound when you hear the /r/: That /r/ed /r/abbit hopped /r/ight to /R/ebecca

  8. Say: "Let's look at this books about a nursey rhyme I’m sure you all know! It’s row row row your boat! Let’s all read it together and then we can sing along " Read the first page, drawing out /r/. Afterwards, allow the students to sing along.

  9. Show RAG and model how to decide if it is rag or bag: The R tells me I’m talking like a pirate, /r/, so this word is rrr-ag rag. You try some: RACE: race or face? FUN: fun or run? HAM: ram or ham? RHYME: rhyme or thyme RING: ring or sing?

Assessment: In addition to monitoring my students, I will give them a worksheet in which they color the object that starts with the letter R and practice writing the letter. I will also call students up to read off the words on the card from #9

Ÿ

Reference

Book: Iza Trapani’s Row Row Row Your Boat, Watertown MA (Charlesbridge , 1999) Pg 2

Reading Genie website- Lauren Lindsey, Exploring reading with roaring “R”

http://laurielel12.wixsite.com/lel0026/emergent-literacy-design

Bruce Murray, Brushing Teeth with F, file:///C:/Users/Emily/Downloads/ExampleELDesign%20(2).pdf

Assessment worksheet: http://www.kidzone.ws/prek_wrksht/learning-letters/r.htm

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