Rationale: This lesson will help children identify /p/, the phoneme represented by P. Students will learn to recognize /p/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation (popping a balloon) and the letter symbol P, practice finding /p/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /p/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.

Materials: Primary paper and pencil; chart with "Polly pocket pranced to pop popcorn"; drawing paper and crayons; Dr. Seuss's ABC (Random House, 1963); word cards with PIG, PINK, POUT, PARK, PAINT, and PLANE; assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /p/ (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 /p/. We spell /p/ with letter P. /p/ sounds like popping a balloon.

2. Let's pretend to pop some balloons, /p/, /p/, /p/. [popping with hands] Notice where your lips are? (Pointing to our lips clenched together). When we say /p/, we clinch our lips together and release to blow air between our top and lower lip-- /p/f.

3. Let me show you how to find /p/ in the word spot. I'm going to stretch spot out in super slow motion and listen for my balloon popping. ss-pp-oo-tt. Slower: ssss-ppppp-oooo-t There it was! I felt my lips clench together and blow air. Balloon popping /p/ is in spot.

4. Let's try a tongue tickler [on chart]. “Polly pocket pranced to pop popcorn”. Polly pocket was hungry so she went to the kitchen to make some popcorn. Here’s our tickler: "Polly pocket prance to pop popcorn." Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, pop the /p/ at the beginning of the words. Polly Pocket Pranced to PoP PoPcorn”. Try it again, and this time break it off the word: "/p/ olly /p/ ocket /p/ ranced to /p/ op /p/ opcorn”.

5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We use letter P to spell /p/. We make a capital P by drawing our domino and then setting the ball between the rooftop and the fence. Let's write the lowercase letter p. Start at fence and draw a line tot the bottom of the ditch. Start to make a little ball from the fence to the sidewalk, connecting to our line we just drew. I want to see everybody's p. Once everyone’s Ps look pretty, I want you to draw 4 more just like it!

6. Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /p/ in paw or sing? pink or blue? pig or hog? push or shove? past or future? Say: Let's see if you can spot the mouth move /p/ in some words. Pop your hands when you hear /p/: The pretty, pony, picked, up, the, posted, painting.

7. Say: "Let's look at an alphabet book. Dr. Seuss tells us about a funny bear who wants to change the color of his pajamas! Read the page, popping the /p/. Ask children if they can think of other words with /p/. Ask them to make up a silly creature name like Pepper-pinky-pig or poppy-polly. Then have each student write their silly name with invented spelling and draw a picture of their silly creature. Display their work.

8. Show PUG and model how to decide if it is pug or dug: The P tells me to pop the balloon, /p/, so this word is p-ug, pug. You try some: PAN: pan or man? PETE: feet or pete? PONG: pong or song? PORK: fork or pork? PACK: pack or sack?

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

References:

Picture: https://www.better-fundraising-ideas.com/your-simple-ideas-for-fetes.html

Assessment worksheet: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/alphabet/circlewordsthatstartwith/p.shtml

Ash Rogers, Pop with P

https://sites.google.com/view/ashrogerslessondesigns/emergent-literacy?authuser=0

​

​