Miss Davis's Reading Lessons
Drive Your Racecar With “V”
Emergent Literacy Design
Rationale: This lesson will help children identify /v/, the phoneme represented by V.
Students will learn to recognize /v/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation (by pretending to drive a racecar while using foot to push the gas pedal), by learning the mouth movements when you are making the sound of v (student push down on gas pedal with foot and making the vroom or v,v,v sound as the car drives), learning a tongue twister, and learning the letter symbol V. Students will practice finding /v/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /v/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.
Materials: Primary paper and pencil; visual aid of race track with cars driving, and chart with the tongue tickler "Viola Vacuumed Violet’s Very Vivid Vehicle"; drawing paper and crayons for activity of writing, coloring, and drawing words beginning with v; word cards with VET, VAN, HOME, VEST, LIGHT, and VOTE; assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /v/ (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 /v/. We spell /v/ with letter V. V looks like a car’s gas pedal, and /v/ sounds like the sound a car makes when pressing on the gas (vroom).
2. Let’s pretend to drive a race car and we’re going really fast, /v/, /v/, /v/. [Be sitting down acting like your hands are on the wheel and continue to push gas pedal while making sound] Notice that your bottom teeth are a little behind you top teeth and that your lips come slightly together and curve. When we say /v/, we blow air between out top teeth and lower lip as our top teeth softly touch our lower lip.
3. Let me show you how to find /v/ in the word vest. I'm going to stretch vest out in super slow motion and listen for my racecar driving sound /v/. Vvv-e-e-sss-t. Slower: Vvv-e-e-e-sss-t There it was! I felt my top teeth touch my lower lip and blow air. I can feel the car driving /v/ in vest.
4. Let's try a tongue twister [on chart]. "Viola Vacuumed Violet’s Very Vivid Vehicle." Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /v/ at the beginning of the words. "Vvvviola Vvvvacuumed Vvvviolet’s Vvvvery Vvvvivid Vvvvehicle." Try it again, and this time break it off the word: "/v/ iola /v/ acuumed /v/ iolet’s /v/ ery /v/ ivid /v/ ehicle”.
5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. Now we’re going to go over how we use letter V to spell /v/. An uppercase V looks like a car’s gad pedal. Let's write the uppercase letter V. First, start at the rooftop and go down to the sidewalk at a slant. Then, make the slant opposite and go back to the rooftop. Next let’s write the lowercase letter v. Start at the fence and go down to the sidewalk at a slant. Then, make the slant opposite and go back to the fence. I want to see everybody's V and v. After I put a star 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 /v/ in
van or bike? violin or trumpet? vowel or consonant? village or town? drive or walk? five or three?
Say: Let's see if you can spot the mouth move /v/ in some words. Drive your car if you hear /v/: "The, very, violent, violet, van, drove, fast, to, the, vet."
7. Say: "Let's look at an alphabet book. The book that we’re going to be looking at is The Viper by Lisa Thiesing. This book focuses on the sound /v/ as a viper, a poisonous snake, is a main speaker. Peggy the pig loves living a simple, carefree life. One day though she gets a mysterious phone call. “I am zee Viper. I vill come in 1 year.” During the next year Peggy is always nervous. Can you guess what will happen with Peggy and the Viper who uses the /v/ sound for everything? Whenever you hear me say a word with the letter /v/, I want each person to push on their gas pedal and vroom their engines. When I am done reading the story aloud, I will ask the students to give me a list of the words that had the /v/ sound in it and put this list on the board for them to see. Ask children if they can think of other words with /v/. Now I want each student to make up a name for a pet snake. An example could be “Viola the Violet Viper". Then each of you will draw and create your very own snake and color any way you want to. Write the name under your snake and do not forget how we practiced writing the letter v. Their work will then be displayed throughout the classroom.
8. Show VAN and model how to decide if it is van or can: The V tells me to push my gas pedal and vroom, /v/, so this word is vvv-an, van. You try some: VEST: vest or test? TOTE: vote or tote? VINE: vine or line? BASE: vase or base? VET: vet or net?
9. For assessment, I will distribute the worksheet. Students are to complete the partial spellings and color the pictures that begin with V. I will also call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #8. At the end of the lesson if we had time, I will have Bingo cards and hand them out to each student. We will play bingo where the teacher is the spokesperson. The card will have words with the letter v in it and some words without v in them. I will call out the word and when a word is called out with v in it, the students will cover that space with a marker when they hear the phoneme it makes. Throughout the game, I will be walking around and seeing if students are covering up their words with the letter v in them. This is a great way for the students to learn while playing a game that they can enjoy with extra time.
References
Murray, Bruce. Emergent Literacy Design: Brush Your Teeth with F, Auburn Canvas: CTRD 3000,
Book: Lisa Thiesing. The Viper. Dutton Children’s Book, 2002. Web.
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Emergent Literacy Guide
