Emergent Literacy | ctrd-reading-website

Heating up your Hands with the Letter H

Emergent Literacy

Rationale: This lesson will help children identify the phoneme /h/ represented by H. Students will learn to recognize /h/ in spoken word by learning a representative gesture (warming hands with breath) and the letter symbol H. Students will apply new knowledge by detecting /h/ in a guided phoneme awareness activity. Then students will participate in an interactive phonetic cue reading exercise by differentiating between rhyming words based on the beginning letter.

Primary paper and pencil
Poster that says, “Harry’s heart was happy because he had hot chocolate.”
Phoneme picture of a person warming their hands
Dr. Seuss’s ABC (Random House, 1963)
List with the following words: hungry, helpful, hairy, happy, handsome, healthy, heavenly
Word Cards with HAND, HUG, MAT, HOP, HELP, JOG
Assessment worksheet with coloring pictures that do and do not begin with H.

Procedures:
Say: The words we speak are made up of many, many sounds. We make different shapes with our mouths to say those sounds. Thankfully, we have an alphabet that helps us put all of those sounds into writing, so we can spell and read words. Today we are going to discover how our mouth says /h/, and we will spell /h/ with the letter H. If we were outside on a snowy, winter day, we would get a lot of practice saying /h/ because that is the sound we make when we warm up our hands with our breath.

Say: Everyone stand up and pretend like you are ice-skating on a cold winter day. Oh no! The ice is very slippery and you fall on the ground. You forgot to wear gloves, and your hands are getting very cold from the ice. Try warming them up with your breath. Say /h/, /h/, /h/ into your hands. Okay everyone can have a seat. Notice how when you say /h/ to warm your hands, you are blowing out air from the back of your throat through your mouth. Try again by putting your hand in front of your mouth and saying /h/. You should feel your warm breath on your hand.

Say: Now I’m going to show you how to find /h/ in the word hill. I’m going to say hill in slow motion- hh-iii-lll . I’m going to say it again and see if I feel my warm breath on my hand when I say it: Hhhh-ii-lll. There it was! I felt /h/ on my hand at the beginning of hill.

Say: Now lets do a tongue tickler with /h/ (display poster): “Harry’s heart was happy because he had hot chocolate.” Let’s say it together now […] Now let’s put our hands to our mouth and look for the /h/ sound at the beginning of the words by separating /h/ from the rest of the word. H-arry’s h-eart was h-appy because h-e h-ad h-ot chocolate.

(Tell students to get their primary paper and writing utensils.) Say: We use the letter H to spell /h/. (Model spelling while you explain)- For a lower case h, we are going to draw a line from the rooftop to the sidewalk and then hop back up to the fence and land on the sidewalk again. I want you to practice writing five lower case h’s. For an upper case H, we are going to draw two separate buildings from their rooftops down to the sidewalk. We will connect the two buildings with a bridge. Everyone try that five times.

Say: Now we are going to see which words we hear /h/ in. When I call on you, tell me which word you hear the /h/ in and how you know. Do you hear /h/ in hot or warm? House or car? Hat or cap? Horse or zebra? Now I want you to warm your hands if you hear /h/ in a word that I read: hairy, hidden, shirt, head, puppy, holiday, and, have. (Pause after each question for student responses.)

Say: Okay, now it’s time to put our new letter into practice. Let’s see what Dr. Seuss says about the letter H. He tells us about some animals that start with /h/. Do you know of some animals start with the /h/ sound? (Listen to student suggestions. Read the H pages from the book and display pictures clearly.) Say: Now pick an animal that starts with the letter H and choose a word from the list to describe it (hungry, helpful, hairy, happy, handsome, healthy, heavenly). Draw a picture that represents the animal you described.

Show the students the card that says HUG and explain how you can tell that it is not BUG. Say: H-ug starts with the /h/ sound and that’s what the letter H at the beginning of the word tells me to say. I saw the letter H which told to warm up my hands and say h-ug. Now it’s your turn to try: HAND- hand or sand? MAT- hat or mat? HOP- hop or stop? JOG- jog or hog? HIT- hit or quit?

Assessment: To assess the students’ learning, distribute a worksheet with pictures of various objects, some starting with H and some not. Instruct students to color in the pictures that have the /h/ sound and to write h at the beginning of the words that start with that letter. Evaluate students individually on the phonetic cue reading words from the previous step. (http://www.kidzone.ws/images-changed/kindergarten/h-as-begins2.gif)