ANNA BYERS

“Popping P’s with Popcorn!”

Emergent Literacy

Anna Byers

 

Rationale: Recognizing a phoneme is a crucial skill that must be mastered before students can effectively read and write. Children must be able to classify different sounds to foster their understanding of language. This lesson engages children in hands on training, decodable scripts, and activities to advance their understanding of the phoneme /p/. This lesson will help children identify /p/ , the phoneme represented by P. Upon completion of this lesson students will be able to recognize /p/ in spoken words by learning meaningful representation (i.e. popping popcorn) and the letter symbol P.

 

Materials: pencils, primary paper, and crayons, tongue twister poster “Princess Pam pants the pumpkins in the patch.”, notecards with a picture of popcorn and the letter “P” on the other side, Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse By Kevin Henkes, assessment worksheet for each student.

 

Procedure:

1. To begin the lesson, explain to students how different letters make different sounds, and our mouths have to move in different ways for each different sound. Say: “Have you ever thought about the different sounds you hear in words? It is sometimes tricky if you don’t know what sounds all of the letters make. Today we are going to focus on how we make /p/. The letter “P” makes the /p/ sound. Everyone watch my mouth as I say, /p/!” (The teacher should exaggerate the p sound for students to hear and the movement of the mouth when making the /p/ sound.)

 

2. Have students practice writing the lowercase letter p.  Say: “Remember, to write the letter “p” start with your pencil at the fence, and go all the way down into the ditch. Then we come back up and circle around making the top of his head touch the fence and his chin rest on the sidewalk. Watch as I draw the letter “p”. (Teacher draws “p” on the board) Now lets all take out a piece of primary paper and practice writing the letter p. When you are finished hold up thumbs up way high in the shy and I will come see!

 

3. Model how to make the /p/ sound and what your mouth does when you say /p/. Say: “ Raise your hand if you have ever eaten popcorn! Who has heard what popcorn sounds like popping in the microwave? What sound does it make? (wait and allow students time to respond) Yes, it makes the /p/ /p/ /p/ sound just like our letter P. Lets all make the sound together. (Perform the /p/ /p/ /p/ sound along with the students) Wonderful! Notice how I start with my lips together and them I push them out to let out a small “puff” of air. Lets all make the /p/ sound some more noticing what our mouths are doing! (continue making the /p/ /p/ /p/ sound with students)

 

4. Show the students how they can stretch out words to find the appropriate sound. Say: “I am going to show you how to find the /p/ sound in the word “pig”. First, I am going to stretch the word out so that I can tell when I hear the popcorn popping: pppp-iiiii-ggggg. Ppp….there it is! Do you hear the /p/ sound in p-i-g? I heard my popcorn popping at the beginning of the word ‘pig’ so I know there is a ‘p’ at the beginning of the word ‘pig’. Lets all say ‘pig’ slowly: ppppp-iii-ggg. Now say it even slower and really stretch out the beginning sound: ppppppppppp-ii-ggg. I can hear the popcorn popping in pig. Do you hear the popcorn popping in pig when you say it?”

 

5. Have the students say a tongue twister that is on the poster as a class to obtain more practice with the new sound. Say: “Look at this poster. One day a princess named Pam decided she wanted to plant something new and fun, so she did! (Read tongue tickler aloud)  “Princess Pam plants pumpkins in the pumpkin patch.” Now lets stretch out each word to figure out where all of the popcorn pops.” (Say the tongue tickler slowly exaggerating the /p/ sound in each word.) Hand out the note cards with popcorn on one side and the letter “p” on the other. Say: “Everyone look at the notecard I just gave you. There is a picture of popcorn on one side and the letter “P” on the other. When you hear the popcorn popping in our tongue tickler raise the notecard way up high for me to see. Ready? “ppppprincess pppammm ppppplants pppumpppkins in the pppumpppkin ppppatch.” Lets say it again but this time lets stop and say the /p/ separately from the word. For example: /p/ rincess /p/am /p/lants /p/umpkins in the /p/umpkin /p/atch. Great!

 

6. In order to asses the students understanding, say words aloud and have students raise the “popcorn card” for words that they hear /p/. Say: “ Now I am going to say a word and we will see if we can figure out if it has any popping popcorn in it. We are going to practice stretching out our words like we did before. I will go first: the word is “flag”. Fff-lll-aaa-ggg, flag” hmm, I do not think I heard any popping popcorn at all. Let me stretch it out slower: ffffffff-llll-aaaa-gggg, nope, there is definitely no /p/ in the word flag. Now it is your turn. The word is play, stretch it out to yourselves and when I give you a thumbs up, if you hear any popping popcorn hold up your popcorn card and if you do not hear any popping popcorn leave your card on your desk. (Continue this exercise for the words “rug, foot, cup, jog, hop” Now let’s play a game. I want everyone to crouch on the flood beside your desk. I am going to say some words and I want you to pop up like popcorn and make the /p/ sound when you hear any popping popcorn sound. (Read the words “puddle, mat, jump, sit, blue, happy, lip, rock, purple, lid, cow, lamp”) Very good!

 

7. Read Lilly’s purple plastic purse. Say: “Now that we jumped all around lets all sit back and relax. I am going to read a story called Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse. Lilly loves school and is so excited for her turn at show and tell. She decides to bring her beautiful purple plastic purse with all of her most prized possessions. Mr. slinger, her teacher takes her purple plastic purse away from her though. To find out why he took it away and if she will get it back we will have to keep reading. I am going to read it out loud and you listen closely. Any time you hear /p/ I want you to raise your “popcorn card” up in the sky. After we read we will talk about all the letters you raised your card for.

 

8. Give each student the assessment worksheet. The teacher will say the names of the pictures (pig, igloo, peacock, leaf, apple, pumpkin) and tell the students to color each word that BEGINS with a “P”. They will use the crayons to color all of the pictures that start with “P”. This will assess if each student is phonetically aware of the phoneme /p/.

 

Reference:

Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse, By Kevin Henkes

 

Assessment Worksheet:

Page 3 of: www.kidsactivitiesblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Letter-P-Worksheets.pdf

 

Lesson References:​

Harris, Melissa. “Pop! Goes the Popcorn”

http://www.auburn.edu/%7Emth0009/HarrisEL.htm

View this lesson 

 

Murray, Bruce. “Brush Your Teeth with F: Emergent Literacy”

http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/sightings/murrayel.html

View this lesson

 

Explanation for forming the letter “p”:

Bruce Murray, Making Sight Words, Ronkonkkoma, Linus Publications, Inc, page 294

 

 

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