Emergent Literacy Design

Emergent Literacy Design: Wash Your Clothes with W

Rationale:This lesson will help children identify /w/, the phoneme represented by W. Students will learn to recognize /w/ in spoken words by learning a sound analogy (washing machine) and the letter symbol W, practice finding /w/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /w/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.

Materials:

Primary paper
Pencil
Chart with tongue tickler "Willy’s washing washer washed weekly."
Drawing paper
Crayons
Book: My W Book by Jane Belk Moncure
Word cards with WASH, WAKE, WEAK, WIND, WORK, and WOW
Assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /w/ (URL below).

Procedures:

1. Say: Our written language is a secret code. It can be tricky learning what letters stand for and the mouth moves we make as we say words. Today we're going to work on spotting the mouth move /w/. We spell /w/ with the letter W. W looks like waves, and /w/ sounds like a washing machine.

2. Let's pretend to wash our clothes, /w/, /w/, /w/. [Pantomime washing clothes] Notice where your lips are? When we say /w/, we softly push air between our top lip and lower lip like a whisper.

3. Let me show you how to find /w/ in the word saw. I'm going to stretch saw out in super slow motion and listen for my waves. Sss-a-aw. Slower: Ssss-a-a-www There it was! I felt my lips touch and blow soft air. Wave /w/ is in saw.

4. Let's try a tongue tickler [on the chart]. Willy has a washing machine, a machine that washes clothes. Willy’s clothes get dirty often. Now he has to wash them again. Here’s our tickler: " Willy’s washing washer machine washed weekly." Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /w/ at the beginning of the words. "Wwwilly's wwwashing wwwasher wwwashed wwweekly." Try it again, and this time break it off the word: "/w/ illy's /w/ ashing /w/ asher /w/ ashed /w/ eekly.

5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We use letter Wto spell /w/. Capital W looks like a wave. Slant down, up, down, up. Let's write the lowercase letter w. Down, up, down, up. I want to see everybody's w. After I put a smile on it, I want you to make six more just like it.

6. Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /w/ in work or tap? soft or wax? lazy or wavy? where or there? weak or strong? Let's see if you can spot the mouth move /w/ in some words. Make waves with your hands if the word has /w/: The, wacky, wolf, spider, got, caught, in, his, web.

7. Say: "Let's look at My W Book. Jane Belk Moncure tells us about a little girl named little w that goes around placing things and animals that she sees in her box. " Drawing out /w/. Ask children if they can think of other words with /w/. Ask them to make up animals that start with /w/ and draw them out. Display their work.

8. Show WASH and model how to decide if it is wash or cash: The W tells me to wave my hands, /w/, so this word is www-ash, wash. You try some: WAKE: wake or bake? WEAK: weak or peak? WIND: wind or find? WORK: work or pork? WOW: wow or pow?

9. For assessment, distribute the worksheet. Students color the pictures that begin with W. Call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #8.

Reference: Bridgett Davis’s, Turn the Helicopter Blades with W.
https://bpc0009.wixsite.com/readingdesigns/emergent-literarcy

Practice Worksheet: https://www.education.com/download/worksheet/74102/coloring-learn-letter-w.pdf

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