Emergent Literacy

Drum Drum Drumming with D

Katie Oliver

Rationale: The goal of this lesson is to help children identify /d/, the phoneme represented by the letter D. Students will be instructed on how to recognize /d/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation of the sound (hitting a drum) and the letter symbol D, practice finding /d/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /d/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.

Materials:

Primary paper and pencil
Poster with “David danced with Daisy the dog”
Drawing paper and crayons
Danny and the Dinosaur Go to Camp (Harper & Row, 1996)
Word cards with
Assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /f/ (URL below)

Procedures:

1. Say: Our written language is a secret code. The tricky part is learning what letters stand for—the mouth moves we make as we say words. Today we're going to work on spotting the mouth move /d/. We spell /d/ with letter D. D looks like a loaf of bread turned on its side, and /d/ sounds like the sound that’s made when you hit a drum.

2. Let's pretend to hit a drum, /d/, /d/, /d/. [Pretend to hit a drum with drumsticks] Notice where your tongue is? (Touching the roof of your mouth behind your top teeth). When we say /d/, we blow air out of our mouth while we pull our tongue back from the roof of our mouth.

3. Let me show you how to find /d/ in the word spider. I'm going to stretch spider out in super slow motion and listen for my drum sound. Sss-pp-ii-dd-err. Slower: sssss-pppp-iii-ddddd-errrr. There it was! I felt my tongue touching the roof of my mouth and then blowing air out. I can feel the drum beat /d/ in spider.

4. Let's try a tongue tickler [on chart]. "David danced with Daisy the dog." Let’s all say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /d/ at the beginning of the words. "Ddddavidd ddddancedd with Ddddaisy the ddddog." Try it again, and this time break it off the word: "/d/ avid /d/ anced with /d/ aisy the /d/ og.

5. [Instruct students to take out primary paper and pencil]. We use letter D to spell /d/. Capital D looks like a loaf of bread turned on its side. Let's write the lowercase letter d. Start at the fence and make a c that touches the sidewalk. Now, go up to the rooftop and draw a straight line, like an l to close up the c. Let me see everyone’s d. Now, make 6 more just like that one.

6. Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /d/ in swim or dive? dime or nickel? plate or dish? up or down? desk or chair? Say: Let's see if you can spot the mouth move /d/ in some words. Hit your drum if you hear /d/: The dusty, dirty, cat, dug, down, in, the, deep, dark, hole.

7. Say: “Let’s take a look at Syd Hoff’s book about a boy named Danny and his dinosaur friend. Hoff describes the adventures that Danny and his dinosaur friend have when they go to camp. Listen to the words “Danny” and “dinosaur.” Do they have something in common?” Read page 5, drawing out /d/. Have children think of other names or animals that start with D. Ask them to draw their favorite animal that starts with a D, and write the name of the animal. Display your students’ work.

8. Show DIG and model how to decide if it is dig or pig: The D tells me to hit my drumb, /d/, so this word is ddd-ig, dig. You try some: DOT: dot or pot? RAMP: damp or ramp? DARK: dark or bark? SEED: deed or seed? DEER: deer or peer?

9. For assessment, distribute the worksheet. Students are to complete the partial spellings and color the pictures that begin with D. Call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #8.

Resources:

Hoff, Syd. Danny and the Dinosaur Go to Camp. New York City: Harper & Row, 1996. Print.

Morgan Dunn. Buzz Like a Bee with Z. http://lmd0015.wix.com/literacy-designs - !blank/ckqo

Lydia Moore. Gulping Grape Juice with G. https://sites.google.com/site/lydiasreadinglessons/home/gulping-grape-juice-with-g-1

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/phonetic/d.shtml

http://www.home-speech-home.com/d-words.html

Assessment worksheet: http://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/d-begins2.htm

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