top of page

Emergent Literacy Design: Huffing with H

Breanna Jackson 

​

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 (dog out of breath/panting) 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 tongue tickler "Harry had a horrible headache and hated to hear Henry howl.”

  • Drawing paper and crayons

  • Stan and Jan Berenstain’s Old Hat New Hat (Random House, 1997)

  • Word cards with HOT, HOME, HAG, HAD, HIKE, and HELP

  • 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 finish line in a race. Imagine that you have been running for a long time and you are tired and out of breath. The sound that you make when you are "huffing and puffing” and out of breath makes the /h/ sound; like the noise a dog makes when it comes inside panting after playing outside for a long time. 

            2. Let's pretend to run really fast, /h/, /h/, /h/. [Pretend to run by moving your arms] What does my mouth do when I breathe hard?  (Open, with tongue in bottom of mouth) When we say /h/, we blow air out of our mouth.

            3. Let me show you how to find /h/ in the word hop. I'm going to stretch the word hop out in super slow motion and listen to see when I sound out of breath. Hhh-o-p. Slower: Hhhh-o-o-o-pp

There it was! I felt my mouth open into a circle. I can feel myself breathing hard /h/ in hop.

            4. Let's try a tongue twister [on chart]. "Harry had a horrible headache and hated to hear Henry howl.." Everybody say it three times together. Now let’s say it again, and this time, stretch the /h/ at the beginning of the words. "Hhharry hhhhhad a  hhhhhorible hhheadache and hhhated to hhhhear HHHHHenry hhhowl” Try it again, and this time break it off the word: "/H/arry /h/ad a /h/orrible /h/eadache and /h/ated to /h/ear /H/enry /h/owl.”

            5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We use the letter H to spell /h/.  The capital letter H looks like a finish line of a race.  Let’s write the lowercase letter h.  Start at the rooftop and draw a straight line to the sidewalk.  Then go to the fence line and make a little hump like “n” from the line down to the sidewalk. I want to see your h. After I put a smiley face 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 him or rim? Hit or kit? Hat or cat? Bug or hug?  Say: Let's see if you can spot the mouth move /h/ in some words. Move you arms like you are running if you hear /h/: The, hurt, furry, hot, bug, hopped, high, to, the, hidden, flowers.

            7. Say: "Now we are going to take a look at a book called Old Hat New Hat by Jan and Stan Berenstain. Brother Bear is looking for a new hat.  What type of hats do you think he will look at?”  Read the book to the students. Ask children if they can think of other words that begin with the letter /h/.  Ask the students to draw a picture of their word and write a sentence using invented spelling featuring their selected word.  Display their work in the classroom.

       8. Show HOT and model how to decide if it is hot or cot: The H tells me to move my arms like I am running, /h/, so this word is hhh-ot, hot. You try some: HOME: home or come? BAG: hag or bag? HAD: had or bad? PIKE: hike or pike? HELP: help or yelp?

        9. For assessment, distribute the worksheet. Students are to complete the partial spellings and color the pictures that begin with H. Call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #8.

 

Reference:

 

Alexandria Miller; "Hounding H" https://anm0054.wixsite.com/lessondesigns/emergent-literacy

Assessment Worksheet: http://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/h-begins2.htm

​

Click here to return to the Developments index. 

DOG.gif
bottom of page