Emergent Literacy

Bounce a Ball with Bob

Emergent Literacy Design

Madelyn Brown

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

Materials:

Primary paper and pencil
“Bill and Betty baked brown bread for Barbara’s baby” (URL below)
Drawing paper and crayons
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See(Doubleday 1996)
Word cards with BAG, BAT, BED, BEN, BAD, BACK
Assessment worksheet (URL below)

Procedures:

1. “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 /b/. We spell /b/ with letter B. B looks like two balls or the number eight (8), and /b/ sounds like a ball bouncing.”

2. Let's pretend to bounce a ball, /b/, /b/, /b/. [Pantomime bouncing ball] Making a /b/ sound involves the lips closing. Then, they open to make the appropriate sound for /b/.

3. Let me show you how to find /b/ in the word job. I'm going to stretchjobout in super slow motion and listen for the ball bouncing. Jjj-o-b. Slower: Jjj-o-o-bbb. There it was! I felt my mouth close and open. Bouncing ball /b/ isin job.

4. Let’s try a tongue tickler (on website). Barbara’s baby’s loves brown bread. Bill and Betty baked food for Barbara’s baby. Here’s our ticker: “Bill and Betty baked brown bread for Barbara’s baby.” Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /b/ at the beginning of the words. “Bbbill and Bbbetty bbbaked bbbrown bbbread for Bbbarbara’s bbbaby.” Try it again, and this time break it off the word: “/b/ill and /b/etty /b/aked /b/rown /b/read for /b/arbara’s /b/aby. (URL below)

5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We use letter Bto spell /b/. Capital B looks like two balls on top of each other. Let's write the lowercase letter b. Start up top at the sky and move down all the way to the sidewalk. Then, loop it all away around touching the dotted line to make a circle. That’s how you make a b. I want to see everybody's b. After I put a smile 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 /b/ in dad or bat? Battle or table? Brain or desk? Cub or cup? Able or sad? Let's see if you can spot the mouth open and close using /b/ in some words. Bounce a ball if you hear /b/: Bet, happy, bottle, bug, flew, bar, at, belt, table, cup.

7. “Let’s look at Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?.” Every animal sees another animal in the book so let’s take a look at what our friend brown bear sees! Open the book to the first few pages with the big brown bear picture and draw out /b/. Ask children if they can think of other words with /b/. Ask them to make up a silly creature name like Bobby-bally, or Boot-billy-bob. Then have each student write their silly name with invented spelling and draw a picture of their silly creature. Display their work.

8. Show BAG and model how to decide if it is bagor tag: The Btells me to bounce a ball, /b/, so this word is bbb-ag, bag. You try some: BAT: bat or cat? BED: bed or fed? BEN: ben or den? BAD: bad or dad? BACK: back or sack?

9. For assessment, distribute the worksheet. Students will practice writing their upper case and lower case b. After, students will circle all the pictures that start with b testing their phonetic cue reading. Call on students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #8.

References:

Assessment worksheet: https://www.turtlediary.com/worksheet/identify-words-that-start-with-b.html

Tongue tickler: http://wp.auburn.edu/rdggenie/home/materials/ticklers/

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. (Doubleday 1996): https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780805017441

Rachel Less, Bounce the ball with the black dog, Banter. https://sassyrach88.wixsite.com/auburnedu/emergent-literacy

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