Washing Clothes With W
Rationale: This lesson will help students identify /w/, the phoneme represented by W. Students will learn to recognize /w/ in spoken words by learning a memorable representation. Moving the body side to side will represent a washing machine. Also, they will learn to recognize the letter symbol W, practice finding /w/ in words, and practice phoneme awareness in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.
Materials: Primary paper, pencil, index card with tongue tickler, “When the weather is warm we will walk in the wild woods”, word cards (walk, wash, wax, wave, bait, bag), assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /w/.
Procedures:
1. Say: The tricky part about letters is learning what they stand for-the mouth moves we make as we say words. Today, we are going to learn about the mouth move for /w/. We spell /w/ with the letter W. /w/ sounds like a washing machine when it is spinning the clothes around.
2. Let’s pretend to wash our clothes, /w/, /w/, /w/. [Wash clothes by moving your body side to side]. Do you notice what your lips are doing? They are forming a small circle.
3. Let me show you how to find /w/ in the word wing. I’m going to stretch wing out in slow motion and listen for my washing machine. Www-i-i-n-n-g. Slower: Www-i-i-i-n-n-g-g. There it was! I felt my mouth form a circle. I can feel the washing machine /w/ in wing.
4. Let’s try a tongue twister (written on index card). “When the weather is warm we will walk in the wild woods.” Let’s say it together. Now say it again, but this time, try to stretch the /w/ at the beginning of the words. “Wwwhen the wwweather is wwwarm wwwe wwwill wwwalk in the wwwild wwwoods.” Try it one more time, and this time, break it off the word. “/w/hen the /w/eather is /w/arm /w/e /w/ill /w/alk /in the /w/ild /w/oods.”
5. (Have student take out primary paper and pencil). We use letter W to spell /w/. Let’s write the lowercase letter w. Start at the fence, and slant down to the sidewalk. Then slant up to the fence. Slant back down to the sidewalk and up to the fence one last time. (Check to make sure that the student has an understanding and is writing successfully). Now let’s try Capital W. This one is similar to lowercase w, but this time we start at the rooftop and slant down to the sidewalk. Then slant up to the rooftop, down to the sidewalk, and up to the rooftop one last time.
6. Do you hear /w/ in ‘walk’ or ‘run’? ‘Go’ or ‘wait’? ‘Wet’ or ‘dry’? ‘Weak’ or ‘strong’? Let’s see if you can spot the mouth move /w/ in some words. Wash your clothes if you hear /w/: Wayne and Wally want to watch the whales.
7. Say: “Let’s look at a book that uses /w/. [Wings on Things by Marc Brown]. This book tells us about animals that have wings. Can you name a few animals with wings?” Read pages 4-7 and draw out /w/. Ask children if they can think of other words with /w/. Ask them to make up a creature that has wings and give it a name like Willy Wally Wig, for example. Then have the student write their creature’s name with invented spelling and draw a picture of it.
8. Show ‘walk’ and model how to decide if it is ‘walk’ or ‘talk’: The W tells me to wash my clothes, /w/, so this word is www-alk, walk. Now you try some- wax: wax or tax? wave: pave or wave? bait: wait or bait? bag: bag or wag?
9. For assessment, students will complete the worksheet. They must circle all of the images that start with the letter W.
Need this lesson translated in Ukrainian? Click on the pink box to check it out!
References:
Duke, Savannah: W...W...Whish Goes the Jump Rope
http://sav4au.wix.com/misssavannahsreading#!about1/c1x1t
Murray, Bruce:
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/
Wings on Things:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYaVrN30adg
Worksheet:
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/alphabet/circlewordsthatstartwith/w.shtml
Additional lesson designs:
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/connections.html
