Using songwriting to build awareness of beginning letter sounds
http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=274
A lesson plan for grades K–1 English Language Arts
In this lesson, from ReadWriteThink, students begin by singing a song to the tune of “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Kindergartners identify and learn letter names and beginning consonant sounds. First graders extend the activity by creating new verses of the song as a class, thus building phonemic awareness and vocabulary. Second graders create their own song verses, which integrates the activity of songwriting to support many aspects of language development. The activity culminates by illustrating the song verses.
North Carolina Curriculum Alignment
English Language Arts (2004)
Grade 1
- Goal 1: The learner will develop and apply enabling strategies and skills to read and write.
- Objective 1.01: Develop phonemic awareness and demonstrate knowledge of alphabetic principle:
- count syllables in a word.
- blend the phonemes of one-syllable words.
- segment the phonemes of one-syllable words.
- change the beginning, middle, and ending sounds to produce new words.
- create and state a series of rhyming words that may include consonant blends (e.g., flag, brag).
- Objective 1.02: Demonstrate decoding and word recognition strategies and skills:
- generate the sounds from all the letters and appropriate letter patterns which should include consonant blends and long and short vowel patterns.
- use phonics knowledge of sound-letter relationships to decode regular one-syllable words when reading words and text.
- recognize many high frequency and/or common irregularly spelled words in text (e.g., have said, where, two).
- read compound words and contractions.
- read inflectional forms (e.g., -s, -ed, -ing) and root words (e.g., looks, looked, looking).
- read appropriate word families.
- Objective 1.01: Develop phonemic awareness and demonstrate knowledge of alphabetic principle:
Kindergarten
- Goal 1: The learner will develop and apply enabling strategies to read and write.
- Objective 1.01: Develop book and print awareness:
- identify the parts of books and function of each part.
- demonstrate an understanding of directionality and voice-print match by following print word for word when listening to familiar text read aloud.
- demonstrate an understanding of letters, words, and story.
- identify the title, name of the author and the name of the illustrator.
- Objective 1.02: Develop phonemic awareness and knowledge of alphabetic principle:
- demonstrate understanding that spoken language is a sequence of identifiable speech sounds.
- demonstrate understanding that the sequence of letters in the written word represents the sequence of sounds in the spoken word.
- demonstrate understanding of the sounds of letters and understanding that words begin and end alike (onsets and rimes).
- Objective 1.03: Demonstrate decoding and word recognition strategies and skills:
- recognize and name upper and lower case letters of the alphabet.
- recognize some words by sight including a few common words, own name, and environmental print such as signs, labels, and trademarks.
- recognize most beginning consonant letter-sound associations in one-syllable words.
- Objective 1.01: Develop book and print awareness:


