■Before the lesson: 1st semester, teaching initial sounds.
Most books just give a word that begins with the target letter and that’s it! This does not really accomplish anything! For example, from ‘Follow Me’ Book 1:
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| Here is one way to approach teaching initial sounds (from PPT): |
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We do the same for letters B and C. Afterwards, we have several sentences that repeat our target initial sounds. We can now sing the sentences to the ABC / Twinkle Twinkle Little Star tune! With phonics, we want to use the target sounds as often as possible. Plus we always have sentences to go with the target words.
■Short a Sounds Lesson
My lesson today will be teaching the short a sounds (ad-at).This is from ‘Follow Me’ book 2.
AIMS: The student will be able to say and sing the target words and sentence patterns. (dad, mad, fat, cat, mat, rat, hat, “What is on the mat?”
LANGUAGE FOCUS: several short a words, and the sentence pattern “What is on the mat?”
MATERIALS: PPT for the lesson, supplementary phonic worksheet for “What is on the mat?” (from Dongyuan!), student’s writing book
| LESSON: |
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| Review the above pages using PPT. Refer to attached PPT. |
We also review the sentence pattern, “What is on the mat?”.
When the students are confident they understand and can say and answer the sentence patterns we introduce the song. We print out a B5 size copy of the worksheet for each student, which we glue onto their writing books.
The students follow with their fingers to the words. The students will then sing along. Ultimately, the students will sing by themselves to the instrumental version of the song.
At first we sing together.
Then the teachers will sing part 1, students part 2.
TEACHERS SING: What is on the mat, mat, mat?
STUDENTS SING: What is on the mat, mat, mat?
TEACHERS SING: The cat is on the mat, mat, mat!
STUDENTS SING: The cat is on the mat, mat, mat!
ALL SING: C-A-T!
And so on! Then we switch parts.
To conclude the lesson, the students will draw a mat in their writing books to complete the picture.
■Reflection
Teaching phonics, most teachers will end up re-writing many of the sentences in the books to suit their particular lesson or style. Using common tunes and melodies, will engage the students more, because of their familiarity with the music. Good luck, everybody!
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