Danny the Dinosaur Dances with D
Emergent Lesson Design
Rationale: This lesson will assist children with identifying /d/, the phoneme represented by D. Students will learn to detect /d/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation (dancing like a dinosaur) and the letter symbol D, practice finding /d/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /d/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.
Materials:
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Primary paper and pencils
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Coloring utensils and drawing paper
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Poster with “Danny Dinosaur Dances Down Disney”
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Word cards with DOG, DANCE, NOT, DARK, DOWN, MAY
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Book: Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp (Candlewick Press, 1997)
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Assessment worksheet identifying pictures that start with and sound like /d/ (URL below)
Procedures:
1. Say: Our written language is a secret code. The tricky part is learning what letters stand for—the mouth movements we make as we say words. Today we're going to work on spotting the mouth move /d/and the letter /d/. We spell /d/ with letter D. D looks like a dinosaur curled up sleeping and /d/ sounds like a dinosaur stomping his feet when he dances.
2. Let's pretend to dance loud like dinosaurs!! /d/, /d/, /d/. [stomping feet like and making the noise duh duh duh] What is your tongue doing? When we say /d/ our tongues touch the roof of our mouth and then it comes back down to our teeth. Try it with me and see how your tongue moves in your mouth! /d/ /d/ /d/
3. Now, I am going to show you how to find /d/ in the word band. I'm going to stretch band out in super slow motion and listen for the /d/. Bbb-a-a-a-n-ddd. Slower now: Bbbb-a-a-a-a-n-n-n-n-dddd. Did you hear it? I felt my tongue reach the roof up my mouth and land back at my bottom teeth. I can feel the /d/ in band.
4. Let's try a tongue tickler [on poster]. "Danny Dinosaur Dances Down Disney." Everybody say it three times together together now. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /d/ at the beginning of the words. "Dddanny dddinosaur dddances dddown dddisney." Try it again, and this time break it off the word: "/d/ anny /d/ inosaur /d/ ances /d/ own /d/isney.
5. [Have the students take out primary paper and pencil]. Say: We use letter D to spell /d/. Capital D looks like a dinosaur curled up sleeping. With capital D, start at the roof, go straight down, pick up, and go around! Let's try writing upper case D now. I want you to write D six times, Great job! Now let's try lower case d. Lower case d looks like a dinosaur sleeping without his tail tucked in. Let's write the lowercase letter d. Start by drawing a straight line down from the rooftop all the way down the side walk, then draw a little c on the left side of your line just below the rooftop. Remember, first little c, then little d! Great! Now, I want to see everybody's lowercase d. After I see you can write your lowercase letter d I will give you a sticker and then I want you to practice it some more. Write 6 more just like the first one!
6. Now we are going to see which words have the sound /d/ in them. I am going to call on students to answer: Do you hear /d/ in drum or cat? dolphin or flower? day or night? duck or fluff? door or sore? Say: Now I am going to read you some words and see if you can hear the sound /d/. If you hear /d/ I want you to stomp your feet: dig, silly, ran, dance, dark, hot, draw, blue, at, dawn
7. Say: “I want to tell you a little bit about the book “Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp”. The word Dinosaur starts with the letter d and when they stomp their feet it makes a sound like /d/. This book is all about dinosaurs dancing but they are not very light on their toes. When they dance it is loud because they are so big and heavy. That is why when they have a dance party it is called the dinosaur stomp! Let’s read the rest of the book to see just how this dinosaur dance party goes” After we finish the book I will ask the children if they can draw their own dinosaur at a dancing party. I will ask them to name the dinosaur they draw something silly starting with the letter D. Then I will take up all the drawings of the dinosaurs with their made up names and hang them up to show off our work around the class.
8. Show DOG and model how to decide if it is dog or log: The D tells me to sound like a stomping dinosaur, /d/, so this word is ddd-og, dog. You try some: NOT: dot or not? DARK: dark or mark? DOWN: down or gown? MAY: day or may? DANCE: dance or prance?
9. For my assessment, I will give each student a worksheet for them to complete. The students are to color only the pictures that begin with the letter d and make the /d/ sound. There are items on the sheet that are not d words that they should leave uncolored. While the class is working I will ask certain students to read to me the phonetic cue words in step number eight.
References:
Bruce Murray. Brush Your Teeth With F
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/sightings/murrayel.html
Katherine Johnson. D-D-Drum With D. http://katcjohnson.wixsite.com/mysite/emergent-literacy
Elyssa Hicks. The Dog Digs in the Dirt for the letter D. http://erh0014.wixsite.com/elyssahicks/emergent-reader-lesson-design
Book: Shields, Carol Diggory. Saturday Night At the Dinosaur Stomp. Cambridge, Mass.: Candlewick Press, 1997.
Worksheet for assessment: https://www.education.com/worksheet/article/beginning-sounds-coloring-dog/
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