Hairy Harrison Huffs and Puffs with H

Emergent Lesson Design

Anna Laws

Rationale:

This lesson will aid children in identifying /h/, the phoneme represented by h. Students will learn to detect /h/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation (dog panting) and the letter symbol h, practice finding the letter in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /h/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.

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Materials:

1. Primary paper and pencil

2. Chart with “Hairy Harrison hurried home to help his master find his hat”

3. Picture of Hairy Harrison on a board

4. Drawing paper and crayons

5. Word cards with HIDE, ROD, HOME, HOG, HIT, BEAR, DIG

6. Richard Waring’s Hungry Hen (HarperCollins 2001)

7. Assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /h/ (URL below)

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Procedures:

1. Say: Our written language is a secret code. Sometimes it is hard to learn what letters stand for – the mouth movements we make as we say words. Today, we are going to discover and work on spotting the mouth move /h/ and the letter h. The letter h looks like a tired dog who has his tongue out huffing and puffing, and /h/ sounds like the noises an exhausted dog would make after playing outside for a long time.

2. Let’s play a game of pretend. You are a dog that just spent the whole day playing in the backyard chasing squirrels who huffs and puffs: /h/, /h/, /h/. [stick your tongue out and make panting sound]. What does your mouth and tongue do? Notice that your mouth is opened, your tongue is resting on the bottom of your mouth, and as you breathe out the /h/ sound forms. If you put your hand up to your mouth when you do it, you can feel the breath on your hand. Try it with me!

3. Now, I am going to teach you how to find the letter h in the word help. I’m going to say “help” very slowly and I want you to listen for the panting dog sound /h/. Hhh-e-lll-p. Slower: hhhh-eee-lll-p. Did you hear it? You should be able to feel your mouth open and breath coming out of your mouth onto your hand with the first letter of the word. I can feel the huff and puff /h/ in help.

4. Let’s try a tongue tickler [on board] and listen for the /h/ sound. Read this story: “Harrison was a very hairy dog. One day he went outside to play and saw his master’s hat tumbling down the sidewalk. The wind must have knocked it off his master’s head! Hairy Harrison hurried home to help his master find his hat.”Everyone repeat after me, then we’ll say it three times together. “Hairy Harrison hurried home to help his master find his hat.” Let’s say it again, but this time I want you to stretch out the /h/ at the beginning of the words. “Hhhairy Hhharrison hhhurried hhhome to hhhelp hhhis master find hhhis hhhat. Try it again, and this time separate the /h/ sound from the word: /h/ airy /h/ arrison /h/ urried /h/ ome to /h/ elp /h/ is master find /h/ is /h/ at.

5. [Have the students take out primary paper and pencil.] We use the letter h to spell /h/. Let’s write the lowercase h. First we begin by drawing a line from the rooftop down to the sidewalk. Then from the sidewalk, let’s hop back up towards the fence, stop at the fence and curve back down to the sidewalk to the right making a sideways "c" shape. I want everyone to make the letter h. Now, lets learn to write an uppercase H. First, go down from the rooftop to the sidewalk to make a straight line. Then move over a little space and draw another line from the rooftop to the sidewalk so that the two lines are right next to each other. Then connect the two lines together by drawing another line through the fence. Once I check it off to see that you did it right, I want you to make nine more Hh’s just like it.

6. Now we are going to try to find out which word has the sound /h/ in it. I am going to call on a few students to answer which word they think they hear it in. Do you hear /h/ in hide or ball? Hear or fish? Door or hunt? Say: Now, I will read you a few words and when you hear /h/, act like you are panting dog who’s really tired from playing so: hide, rod, dig, hard, bear, hog, hit

7. Say: “Now, let’s look at an alphabet book called Hungry Hen. This book is about a growing hen who eats a lot and a hungry fox who wants to eat the hen. Read to find out if the fox ends up gobbling up the hen!” Read page 8 where it says, “hen’s house” and draw out the letter h. After reading this aloud, ask what words the students hear that make the /h/ sound from the story that stood out to them. Can you think of any other animals that start with a /h/ sound? Can each of you think of a silly tongue tickler with words that start with the letter h like the one about Hairy Harrison to go with another animal? Each student should get out a piece of paper and draw a picture of whatever animal he/she thought of and write the name of the animal underneath the picture you draw. Display their work.

8. Show HOG and model how to decide if it is hog or dog. The h tells me to pant like a tired dog, /h/, so this word is hhh-o-g, hog. You try some: HUNT: hunt or punt? HOT: dot or hot? HIT: hit or lit? HAND: land or hand?

9. For assessment, a worksheet will be distributed to each student. The worksheet has pictures of ten items that either begin with the letter h and have the /h/ sound or pictures that do not. Students should color the pictures with the letter h in them. While they are engaged in this activity, I will call on students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #8.

 

Reference:

Book: Waring, Richard, and Caroline Church. Hungry Hen. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. Print.

Resource of another H lesson: Leah Impastato, Hamilton the Panting Hound Dog.

http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/solutions/impastatoel.htm

Worksheet: www.education.com/worksheet/article/beginning-sounds-coloring-hippo/

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