MA Standards:
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: (/q/ and /n/)
© Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Early Education and Care (Jennifer Waddell photographer). All rights reserved.
ELA Focus Skills: Phonological Awareness (Beginning Sounds)
Do the word play “Tell Me What You Hear” to have children listen for words that begin with the /q/ and /n/ sounds. Recite the following chant, using words that begin with the target sounds /q/ and /n/.
Tell Me What You Hear
Listen, listen, loud and clear (cup your hands to one ear)
What’s the first sound that you hear?
Quit, quail, quack (emphasize the /q/ sound)
Tell me, tell me, what you hear! (children say the /q/ sound)
Repeat the word play for the /n/ sound, using the words net, nap, and nickel.
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.