Polly's Popcorn for P!
Emergent Literacy Design by Angel Fuentes
Rationale: The purpose of this lesson is to help students identify /p/, the phoneme represented by P. Students will learn how to identify /p/ in spoken words through sound analogies (popping popcorn). Students will practice finding /p/ in various words and apply awareness of /p/ in phonetic cue reading through rhyming words from their beginning letters.
Materials: Primary paper and pencil, chart with “Polly Pocket popped her pink popcorn,” The Perfect Pumpkin Pie by Denys Cazet; drawing paper and crayons; word cards with PEN, PENCIL, TAN, BASS, POOL; worksheet assignment to identify the /p/ words.
Procedures:
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Say: Our written language is a lot like a secret code and the hard part is learning what all of the different letters stand for – the mouth moves to make sounds to help us say different words. Today we are going to learn how to recognize /p/ words and how or mouth moves when we say it! We spell /p/ with the letter P. P looks like a line that pops out at the top and /p/ sounds like popping popcorn
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Lets pretend like we are popping popcorn with our mouths, /p/, /p/, /p/. (pretend to pop popcorn) Can everyone feel where their lips are? (touch lower lip) When we say /p/ our lips come together and then pop apart just like popcorn!
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Now lets learn how to find the /p/ in the word rope. I am going to stretch this rope in super slow motion and I want you to listen for the pop sound (say the word rope very slowly, exaggerating the /p/ sound). Did you guys hear it? (do it one more time but a little faster) There it was! I felt my lips pop for the P in rope.
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Lets try the tongue tickler on our chasrt. Polly Pocket is a little girl. She loves to eat her favorite popcorn by popping it herself. Her favorite popcorn is pink popcorn! Lets give it a try, “Polly Pocket popped her pink popcorn” Everyone say it three times all together. Very good! Now lets all say it again but this time I want you guys to make the /p/ sound really stretch. “Pppppoly Pppppocket Pppppopped her Pppppink Ppppppopcorn”. Now lets do it again but pause after we say the /p/. “/P/olly /P/ocket /P/opper her /P/ink /P/opcorn”
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(Have students pull out their paper and pencils) We use the letter P to spell /p/. the Capital P looks like Polly’s popcorn is attached to a long line. Lets all write the uppercase P. We start at the rooftop of our paper and draw a line from the rooftop all the way down to the sidewalk. Then we make an o that connects to our line from the rooftop to the fence. Everyone show me what you’ve done. After I put a sticker on it I want you all to do 9 more just like the one we just did.
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Say: Now we are going to make the lowercase letter P. To start we are going to start at the fence, go straight down until we reach the into the ditch, then come up and put his little chin on the sidewalk like he is taking a nap. And that’s it! That’s a lowercase P. After I put a sticker on your paper go ahead and do another 9 more just like that one we did together.
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Call on students to show how they know: Do you hear /p/ in pass or throw? Airplane or Boat? Puppy or Snake? Pencil or Marker? Say: Now lets try and see if we can spot how our mouths move /p/ in some words. Say “pop” if you hear /p/! Paper, ink, Play, fun, pink, joke, pass, sand, put, throw.
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Say: “now lets read a story together. This book is called The Perfect Pumpkin Pie. It is about Old Man Wilkerson wanting a perfect pumpkin pie. Jack and his grandma have just moved into Old Man Wilkerson;s old house and he tells them that if he does not get a perfect pumpkin pie he will haunt their house. “lets read the story to see if he ever gets to taste his perfect pumpkin pie and if you hear the /p/ sound in this story I want you to say “pop” or jump up really fast like popcorn does when you make it. Ask children if they can think of other foods that also start with the letter P and then have them draw a picture of the food that they thought of. Display the artwork around the classroom.
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Show PEN and show how to decide if the word is PEN or HEN: the P tells us that this word is popping, /p/,so this word is ppppppp-een. Pen! You try to say Pencil or stencil? Tan or Pan? Bass or Pass? Pool or Tool?
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To assess the effectiveness of this lesson, distribute the worksheets. Students are to complete the worksheet and fill in the missing letters from words and color the pictures that start with the letter P. While this is going on call on students one at a time for them to read the cue words from step number 7.
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References:
Bruce Murray, Brush Your Teeth with F
https://murraba.wixsite.com/readinglessons/emergent-literacy
The Perfect Pumpkin Pie by Denys Cazet
https://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Pumpkin-Pie-Denys-Cazet/dp/0689864671
Popping Popcorn for P by Aspen Zaloga
https://aspenzaloga.wixsite.com/education/emergent-literacy-design
Assessment Worksheet: