- Between the Lions alphabet chart
- letter card “Uu”
- word card up
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 (/u/)
© Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Early Education and Care (Jennifer Waddell photographer). All rights reserved.
ELA Focus Skills: Letter Recognition, Phonological Awareness, Vocabulary, Word Recognition
Educator Prep: Print out the Between the Lions alphabet chart or create an alphabet chart on chart paper.
Use the Tell Me What You Hear Routine to help children listen for the short /u/ sound at the beginning of familiar words. Use the words up, uncle, umbrella, and under.
Display the up word card. Say, Look at the word up. Who can show me the letter “Uu” in the word up? Who can find the letter “Uu” on our alphabet chart?
Tell Me What You Hear Routine
Recite this chant with words that begin with the target sound /u/.
Listen, listen, loud and clear (cup your hands to one ear)
What’s the first sound that you hear?
Up, uncle, umbrella, under (emphasize the /u/ sound)
Tell me, tell me, what you hear! (children say the /u/ sound)
Source for chant: Mississippi Early Learning Guidelines for Four-Year Old Children, Mississippi Department of Education, 2006.
Adaptation: If young children have difficulty saying the /u/ sound, show them how to form the letter with the tongue in the middle of the mouth, not high or low, and the lips parted but not rounded. Say the following words and have children repeat them: under, uncle, umbrella.
Educator Tip: Guided and independent letter, sound, and word practice continues to take place in center activities. It is helpful to set up the literacy center immediately after the direct instruction and repeat instruction before children work in the literacy center identifying letters.