Flowing Fans with F!
Emergent Literacy Design
Carson Williams
Rationale:
This lesson will help children identify /f/, the phoneme represented by F. Students will learn to recognize /f/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation, a flowing fan, and the letter symbol F, practice finding /f/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /f/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.
Materials:
Primary paper and pencil; chart with “Frank fell face forward following friends”; drawing paper and crayons; Dr. Seuss’s ABC (Random House, 1963); word cards with FAR, FUN, PIG, FEEL, BOND, and FORK; assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /f/ (below).
Procedures:
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Say: “Sometimes it can be confusing figuring out how our mouths should move when we say words with new letters. Today, we will be learning how our mouths should move when a word has the sound /f/. When we spell /f/, we use the letter F. Fis for fan, and when fans are blowing air, they make the sound /f/.”
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Say: “Let’s imagine that it is a hot day and we need a fan to blow some cool air in the classroom. I turn it on, and when it starts to spin it makes the sound /ffff/. [Pantomime a spinning fan by making a circling motion with one finger]. Do you feel your top row of teeth touching your bottom lip when you say /ffff/? When we make this sound, we blow air, just like a fan, out in the middle of our top teeth and bottom lip.”
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Say: “Let’s look at an example word to find the /f/ sound: fast. I’m going to stretch fast out by saying it very slowly. Listen for the spinning fan. Ff-a-a-st. Even slower this time: Ffff-a-a-a-sss-t. Did you hear it right there in the beginning? I feel the fan blowing between my top row of teeth and bottom lip when I say fast.”
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Say: “Now how about we try a tongue tickler? [on chart]. Frank fell face forward following friends…Let’s say that three times as a class. [class says three times] Now let’s do it again, and this time, stretch the /f/ at the beginning of the words. Ffffrank ffffell fffface ffforward fffollowing ffffriends. One more time, but this time, break the /f/ off of each word. /F/rank /f/ell /f/ace /f/orward /f/ollowing /f/riends.”
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[Have students bring out primary paper and pencil]. Say: “We use letter F to spell /f/. Fan starts with the letter F. Let’s try to write the lowercase letter f. Start right below the rooftop. Make a little curve up there and, without lifting your pencil, bring it straight down to the sidewalk. Now, cross it at the fence. Can I see everyone’s lowercase f? After I stick a gold star on your f, please make nine more exactly like it.”
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[Ask students to raise their hands when they know they answer—call on them and ask them to describe how they knew it was the correct option.] Say: “Do you hear /f/ in dog or frog? fin or tail? soft or hard? float or boat? and or if? foot or hand? See if you can find the mouth move /f/ in these words I’m about to say. Spin the fan [pantomime the spinning fan] if you can hear /f/: show, ferry, found, silly, flag, on, off, tug, fickle, tickle.”
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Say: “Now let’s look in our alphabet book. Here, Dr. Seuss tells us about a funny creature with four feathers growing right out of his head! [Read page 16, drawing out /f/.] Can you think of other words with /f/? Everyone try to come up with a silly creature name with /f/…something like Fiffer-feffer-feff, or Footer-flipper-fang. When you have your silly name in mind, write it on the top of your drawing paper, then draw your silly creature underneath using your crayons.” [When they are finished, display their drawings somewhere in the classroom.]
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[Show card with FAR and model how to decide whether it is far or car.] Say: “The F tells me to blow air through my fan, /f/, so this word is fff-ar, far. Why don’t you try a few? [Show FUN] sun or fun? [Show PIG] pig or fig? [Show FEEL] feel or reel? [Show BOND] fond or bond? [Show FORK] pork or fork?”
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[Pass out worksheets for assessment. Ask the students to complete the partial spellings and only color the pictures that begin with F. Call on students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step 8.]
Resources:
Dr. Bruce Murray: http://wp.auburn.edu/rdggenie/
Assessment worksheet:https://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/f-begins2.htm
Annagail Holton, "Pop Popcorn with P":