Chicka Chicka Boom Boom: Learning letters and sounds at a zoom!

This lesson introduces, reviews, and reinforces letter recognition and letter sounds using the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault. Kindergarten children will enjoy this activity! It is appropriate for all academic levels.

A lesson plan for grade K English Language Arts

By Shanna Buckner

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Related topics

• Learn more about alphabet, crafts, hands-on, language arts, and read-alouds.

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Learning outcomes

Students will:

• recognize letters and their sounds.
• learn to combine letters to create their name and begin to recognize it.
• demonstrate fine motor skills through cutting and pasting.
• become familiar with parts of books and their functions.

Teacher planning

Time required for lesson

2.5 hours

Materials/resources

Teacher will need:

• Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault
• 26 5×7 alphabet index cards with upper case letter written on front and lower case letter on back (you will probably want to laminate these)
• pink, green and brown construction paper
• glue
• scissors
• old magazines
• pencils

Technology resources

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom CD-ROM is a great source for reinforcing this lesson! However, it is not required. This CD offers review of letter recognition and letter sounds. I set it up as a rotation during Centers over a week’s time so every child has a turn.

Pre-activities

There is a simple warm up activity to get the students thinking about letters and their sounds.

• Begin by having the children sit in a large circle on the floor. (Children could be seated at tables.) The teacher should lead the children in singing their ABC’s.
• Next, the teacher will pass out one alphabet card to each child. Ask the children to look at both sides of their card and think about what letter it is and what sound it makes. The teacher will line up the extra alphabet cards on the floor in alphabetical order leaving space between missing cards (the ones the children have).
• Begin with the letter “A” and have the student with that card come to the lined up cards on the floor. They should hold it up so all the children can see it. Then the teacher should ask “What letter is this?” The children will respond “A” (hopefully, if not tell them what letter it is). Then the teacher will ask the group “What sound does this letter make?” They should respond with the letter sound.
• After you have completed all the letters A-Z you are ready to begin the lesson.

Activities

Part 1

1. The teacher will read aloud Chicka Chicka Boom Boom as the students are seated on the floor or wherever your whole group space is located in your room.
2. Before reading make sure you review the parts of the book. For example point to the cover and ask the children “What is this?” Also make sure you tell them who the author and illustrator is. You should review that the author writes the words and the illustrator draws or paints the pictures.

Part 2

1. Groups of 4-5 students are seated around table with teacher. The teacher gives each student one piece of pink paper and a pencil. Help them write their name on this paper. (In kindergarten I encourage students to write their name on their paper before we begin to work.)
2. The teacher will give each student brown and green construction paper, scissors, and glue. The teacher will instruct the students to cut out a tree trunk from the brown paper and palm leaves from the green. You can show them the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom book as an example.
3. After they finish cutting out these things they need to glue them to the pink construction paper. They have a coconut tree! Next they will cut out letters from magazines to spell their name. As they find each letter they will glue it on their paper so the letters are going up the tree like in the book.
4. As the students work the teacher will converse with each student about the letters and sounds that are in their name. Letter recognition and sounds will be reinforced as the teacher converses with the students and the students converse with each other.

Assessment

Individual Student Assessment

The teacher will sit down one on one with each student to complete this assessment. The teacher will show alphabet cards to the student and check off which ones he/she knows on the assessment. Next, the teacher will say a letter to the child. The child must tell the sound the letter makes or give a word that begins with that letter.

Group Assessment

After the class has completed their papers, the teacher will assemble the group back in the group area. As the class looks at the papers, the teacher will ask different students whose name is on the coconut tree. This gives the teacher an idea of where each student is with learning their classmates’ names. It demonstrates how well they can recognize familiar words from sight.

Supplemental information

Here is another activity that relates to this book, but uses mathematics as its focus:

Lay the alphabet cards from above on the floor around the room. Instruct the students to find the letter that begins their name. Then each group should sit together near their letter. On the chalk or dry erase board the teacher will write the letters A-Z in graph form leaving space under each one for the students name. With the students help the teacher will write each name under the appropriate letter. (If the children can write their name and reach the board allow them to write their name under the correct letter.) After all the names from the class are on the graph, discuss the graph with the group. Ask questions like “How many names begins with A?” or “How many P names and R names are there?”.

Comments

I hope you find this lesson helpful and useful for your kindergarten class! It is fun and allows the teacher to teach to all the levels their students are on. All good teachers make lessons work for them and I hope you will do the same to this one.