Huge Deep Breaths with H
Neala Casey
Rationale: This lesson will help children identify /h/, the phoneme represented by H. Students will learn to recognize /h/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation (a person out of breath) and the letter symbol H, practice finding /h/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /h/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.
Materials: Primary paper and pencil; chart with "Hannah’s hamster happily eats ham"; drawing paper and crayons; the book Is Jo Home?; word cards with HOG, HIM, HEAT, HIDE, FORK, and HIKE; assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /h/ (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 /h/. We spell /h/ with letter H. H looks like a highway, and /h/ sounds like someone is out of breath.
2. Let's pretend to pant and be out of breath, /h/, /h/, /h/. [Pantomime breathing] Notice how you open your whole mouth, like you’re breathing out. When we say /h/, none of our teeth touch, we just open our mouth.
3. Let me show you how to find /h/ in the word hand. I'm going to stretch left out in super slow motion and listen for my panting. Hhhh-a-n-n-d . Slower: Hhh-a-a-a-nnn-d There it was! I felt my mouth open completely as a I said the beginning part of the word. The panting /h/ is in hand.
4. Let's try a tongue tickler [on chart]. Hannah has a hampster, a small harry animal. The hamster is very hungry, so Hannah has some ham for him. Now she hopes he’ll be happy again. Here’s our tickler: "Hannah’s hamster happily eats ham.” Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /h/ at the beginning of the words. "Hhhhannah’s hhhampster hhhappily eats hhham." Try it again, and this time break it off the word: "/h/ annah's /h/ ampster /h/ appily eats /h/am.
5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We use letter H to spell /h/. Capital H looks like a highway. Let's write the lowercase letter h. Start just below the rooftop. Start by drawing a straight line all the way down to the highway. Then make a small little hill, kind of like the lowercase n connected to the straight line. I want to see everybody's h. After I put a stamp on it, I want you to make nine more just like it.
6. Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /h/ in flew or home? Green or hill? hire or soft? His or drool? Lime or Hand? Say: Let's see if you can spot the mouth move /h/ in some words. Breathe out if you hear /h/: Time, honey, hurry, bag, hike, hit, tool, price, bake, handle
7. Say: "Let's look at a decodable book. This book tells us about a funny creature who wants to play with Jo! Read page 1, drawing out /h/. Ask children if they can think of other words with /h/. Ask them to make up a silly place name like Hal’s hickory hotdog stand. Then have each student write their silly name with invented spelling and draw a picture of their silly place. Display their work.
8. Show HAT and model how to decide if it is hat or bug: The H tells me to laugh with friends, /h/, so this word is hhh-at, hat. You try some: HILL: hill or thrill? HEAT: heat or cleat? HIDE: hide or lied? HAIL: hail or jail? HIKE: hike or like?
9. For assessment, distribute the worksheet. Students color the pictures that begin with H. Call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #8.
Reference:
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/invent/clarkel.html
Shelia Cushman and Rona Kornblum. Is Jo Home? , Educational Insights, California USA (1990)
Assessment worksheet: https://www.superteacherworksheets.com/phonics-beginningsounds/letter-h_WFQTT.pdf?up=1466611200