MA Standards:
English Language Arts/Foundational Skills/RF.PK.MA.2.c: Identify the initial sound of a spoken word and, with guidance and support, generate several other words that have the same initial sound.
Head Start Outcomes:
Language Development/Receptive Language: Attends to language during conversations, songs, stories, or other learning experiences.
Literacy Knowledge/Phonological Awareness: Identifies and discriminates between sounds and phonemes in language, such as attention to beginning and ending sounds of words and recognition that different words begin or end with the same sound.
PreK Learning Guidelines:
English Language Arts/Reading and Literature 8: Listen to, identify, and manipulate language sounds to develop auditory discrimination and phonemic awareness.
Word Play: Tell Me What You Hear (/g/)
© Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Early Education and Care (Jennifer Waddell photographer). All rights reserved.
ELA Focus Skills: Phonological Awareness (Beginning Sound)
Tell children that you are going to recite a poem and you want them to listen to the ending sound in some words. Recite this chant with words that begin with the target sound /g/.
Tell Me What You Hear
Recite this chant with words that end with the target sound.
Listen, listen, loud and clear, (cup your hands to one ear)
What’s the last sound that you hear?
Garden, grape, gardenia (emphasize the /g/ sound)
Tell me, tell me, what you hear! (children say the /g/ sound)
Continue with other words that begin with the letter sound /g/, such as grain, growth, or growl.
Source for chant: Mississippi Early Learning Guidelines for Four-Year Old Children, Mississippi Department of Education, 2006.
Educator Tip: Guided and independent letter, sound, and word practice continues to take place in center activities. If desired, you can set up the literacy center immediately after the direct instruction and repeat instruction before children work in the literacy center identifying letters.