- word card hill
MA Standards:
English Language Arts/Speaking and Listening/SL.PK.MA.1a: Observe and use appropriate ways of interacting in a group (e.g., taking turns in talking, listening to peers, waiting to speak until another person is finished talking, asking questions and waiting for an answer, gaining the floor in appropriate ways).
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:
Social Emotional Development/Self-Regulation: Follows simple rules, routines, and directions.
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: Alliteration (/h/)
© Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Early Education and Care (Jennifer Waddell photographer). All rights reserved.
ELA Focus Skills: Phonological Awareness, Word Recognition
Display the hill word card. Track the letters in the word as you read it aloud. Ask children to identify the sound they hear at the beginning of the word. (/h/) Then ask children to listen to a silly sentence, say, Listen to this silly sentence with words that begin with /h/.
Hippo helped Harry hop home.
Repeat the sentence slowly, emphasizing the beginning sound of /h/.
- Prompt children to say it with you.
- Then challenge them to repeat the tongue twister faster and faster.
- Remind them that the faster you say a tongue twister, the more mixed up you can get!
Take It Further: Encourage interested children make up more alliterative sentences of their own, with real or made-up words.
Adaptation: You may wish to have very young children simply say the alliterative sentence slowly with you and not do the tongue twisting, which might become frustrating for some.