Gulp Your Juice with G
Rationale: The goal of this lesson is to help children identify /g/, the phoneme represented by G. Students will learn to recognize /g/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation (gulping juice), how to write the uppercase and lowercase g, practice finding /g/ words, and apply phoneme awareness with /g/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.
Materials:
1. Primary paper
2. #2 pencil
3. Chart with “Garrett’s green ghost greets Greta”
4. Drawing paper
5. Colored pencils
6. Good Night, Gorilla book
7. Word flashcards with GOT, GOAT, TEAM, GOAL, and ROAM
8. Assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /g/ (URL listed at the end)
Procedures:
1. Say: Our written language is a secret code made up of 26 different letters. These letters signal certain sounds. The tricky part is learning what letters stand for--- the mouth moves as we say words. Today we are going to work on one of the 26 letters and the sound it makes. We are going to spot the mouth move /g/. We spell /g/ with the letter G. /g/ sounds like gulping juice.
2. I want you to notice the way your mouth moves when we make the sound /g/. Let’s pretend to gulp juice. /g/,/g/,/g/. Notice how your throat moves and your tongue touches the back of your throat? When we say /g/, we put our tongue on the top and back of our throat with our mouth slightly open. Notice how a little bit of air moves out when we make this sound.
3. Now that we have practiced the /g/ sound, let me show you how to find /g/ in the word angry. I’m going to stretch angry out in super slow motion and listen for the juice that I am gulping. Aaa-nn-g-r-y. Can you say angry with me in slower motion? Aaa-n-n-ggg-r-y. There it was! I felt my tongue touch the back top of my throat with my mouth open. I can feel the juice being gulped down my throat /g/ in angry.
4. Now, let’s try a tongue twister. “Garrett’s green ghost greets Greta.” Everybody say it three times together with me and then one time by yourself. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /g/ at the beginning of words. “Gggarrett’s gggreen ggghost gggreets Gggreta.” Try it again, and this time break off the word: “/g/ arrett’s /g/ reen /g/ host /g/ reets /g/ reta.” Congratulations, you all did an excellent job saying that tongue twister.
5. [Students take out primary paper and #2 pencil]. We use the letter G to spell /g/. Let’s practice writing the uppercase letter G first. Start by writing a giant C. You start at the rooftop and make a half circle down to the sidewalk. Then, draw a straight line up to the fence and draw a little horizontal line to the left towards the shape. This an uppercase G. Now, let’s make a lower case g. Start at the fence and make a small a shape down to the sidewalk. Then make a line down to the ditch, curling it to the left at the bottom like a monkey tail. I want to see everybody’s G and g. After I come by and put a star sticker on your paper indicating that they are drawn correctly, I want you to make eight more of each uppercase and lowercase letter just like it.
6. Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /g/ in the water or grape? Gallop or sprint? Stop or go? Red or green? Great or evil? Say: Let’s see if you can spot the mouth move /g/ in some words. Gulp your juice if you hear /g/: The, glass, grasshopper, jumped, gracefully, to, the, gated, garden.
7. Say: “Let’s look at the book Good Night, Gorilla. Let’s see how the mischievous gorilla does not want to go to bed at night and would rather unlock the cages of his animal friends in the zoo and stay up all night with them.” Draw out pictures to match the words with the /g/ sound that you hear in the story. Ask children to think of animals or items you would find at a zoo with /g/. Ask them to make up a silly animal names like Granny-goose-goblin, or Gangly-gazelle-goat. Then have each student write their silly name with invented spelling and draw an illustration of their silly creature. Display their work to the class.
8. Show GOT and model how to decide if it is got or hot: the G tells me to gulp my juice, /g/, so this word is ggg-ot, got. You try some: GOAT: goat or boat? TEAM: team or gleam? GOAL: goal or coal? ROAM: roam or groan?
9. For assessment, distribute a practice worksheet. Students are to complete the partial spellings and color pictures that begin with G. Call students one by one individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #8 to assess their understanding.
References:
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/begin/locklierel.html
Byrne, B., & Fielding-Barnsley, R. (1990). Acquiring the alphabetic principle: A case for
teaching recognition of phoneme identity. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82, 805-812.l
Rathmann, Peggy. Good Night, Gorilla. New York: Putnam, 1994. Print.
Assessment worksheet:
http://www.kidzone.ws/prek_wrksht/learning-letters/g.htm
Travels Index:
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/travels.html
