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Emergent Literacy

Pop Popcorn with P

 

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Rationale: This lesson will help children identify /p/, the phoneme represented by P.  Students will learn to recognize /p/ in spoken words by learning a sound analogy (popping popcorn) and the letter symbol P, practice finding /p/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /p/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.

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Materials:

  • Primary paper and pencil

  • Chart with "Patty’s perfectly popped popcorn"

  • Drawing paper and crayons

  • The Pigs’ Picnic, Moore (2001)

  • Word cards with PIG, APPLE, PARTY, PERSON, PAINT, and PARROT

  • Assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /P/ (see URL below).

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Procedures: 

1. Say: Our written language is a secret code. 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 /p/. We spell /p/ with the letter P. P looks like a sideways pan, and /p/ sounds like popping popcorn.

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2. Let's pretend to pop popcorn, /p/, /p/, /p/. [Pantomime fingers in a popping motion] Notice where your lips go together like a pop? (Touching lower lip). When we say /p/, we bring our lips together

and blow air out of our mouth.

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3. Let me show you how to find /p/ in the word cap. I'm going to stretch cap out in super slow motion and listen for my popping p. C-aaaa-pppp Slower: Ccc-aaaaaa-pppppppp There it was! I felt my lips pop and blow air. Popping /p/ is in cap.

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4. Let's try a tongue tickler [on chart]. Patty wants a snack. She asks her mom, Petra, to make her some popcorn. Petra pops Patty’s perfect popcorn. Here’s our tickler: “Petra perfectly pops Patty’s popcorn.” Let’s all say it three times together. Now let’s say it again but this time stretch the /p/ at the beginning of the words. “Pppppetra ppppppopppps Pppppatty’s pppperfect pppppopppcorn.” Try it again and this time break it off the word; /p/etra /p/opped /p/o/p/corn /p/erfectly.

 

5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We use letter P to spell /p/. Capital P looks like an upside-down lowercase b! Let's write the lowercase letter p. Start at the middle line and draw a straight line down to the bottom line. To make the circle, start at the middle line and draw a circle that goes a little above and a little below the middle line. I want to see everyone’s p. After I put a sticker on it, I want you to write 9 more for practice!

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6. Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /p/ in pink or blue? key or cup? marker or pencil? lip or nose? pass or go? Say: Let's see if you can spot the mouth move /p/ in some words. Do a popping motion with your hands if you hear /p/ Piper, went, to, the, park, and, played, with, a, puppy.

 

7. Say: "Let’s look at a fun book, “The Pigs’ Picnic.” This is a story about the Penny, Peter and Polly Pig who are planning the perfect picnic! Every time you hear /p/ in the book, make the popping gesture with your hands. Then at the end, you can draw your own perfect picnic! 

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8. Show PUFF and model how to decide if it is puff or ruff: The P tells me pop popcorn, /p/, so this word is ppp-uff, puff. You try some: POT: pot or hot? PORK: is it pork or fork? STOP: is it stop or pop? BEEP: is it bear or beep? PLANE: is it a plane or shake?

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9. For assessment, distribute the worksheet. Students color the pictures that begin with P. Call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #8.

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Reference Murray, Bruce (2012). Making sight words: Teaching word recognition from phoneme awareness to fluency. Ronkonkoma NY: Linus. p. 110, 294.

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Related design: Bruce Murray, Brush Your Teeth with F  https://murraba.wixsite.com/readinglessons/emergent-literacy

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Assessment worksheet: http://members.learningplanet.com/ws/abc/circleLetters/circle_p.pdf

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Image:

https://media2.giphy.com/media/65LcwStZ4smNeDa6jQ/source.gif

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