Emergent Literacy

Munching with M!

Emergent Literacy Design

Rationale: This lesson will help students identify /m/. Students will learn how to identify the letter and sound /m/ in spoken words by learning a sound analogy (saying /m/-/m/-/m/) and the symbol M. Students will also practice finding /m/ in words and apply phoneme awareness with m/m in phonic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.

Materials:

Primary Paper and Pencil
Chart with “Martha Munched on Mom’s Muffins.”
Drawing Paper and Crayons
Dr. Seuss's ABC (Random House, 1963)
Word Cards with MAD, MIX, GREET, FATE, MAKE, MINE
Assessment Worksheet identifying pictures with /m/. (URL below)

Procedures:

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 /m/. We spell /m/ with letter M. M looks like McDonalds! /m/ sounds like what we say when we eat something yummy! (m-m-m)
Let’s pretend we are eating our favorite food, /m/-/m/-/m/-/m/. [Pantomime eating food and rubbing stomach.] Notice your lips! When we say /m/-/m/-/m/, our lips are together!
Let me show you how to find /m/ in the word time. I’m going to stretch it out and listen for m-m-m. tttttt-iiiii-mmm-e. There it is! I felt my lips come together. Yummy /m/ is in time.
Let’s try a tongue tickler [on chart]. Martha’s mom makes amazing muffins. Her mom makes them for her every day after school. Here’s our tickler: “Martha munched on Mom’s Muffin’s”. Everyone say it three times together. Now say it again and this time stretch the /m/ out at the beginning of the words. “Mmmartha Mmmunched on Mmmom’s Mmmuffins”. Try it again, and this time break it off the word: “/m/artha /m/unched on /m/om’s /m/uffins”.
[Have students take out primary paper and pencil.] We use letter M to spell /m/. Capital M looks like the McDonalds logo. Let’s write lowercase m. Start at the fence and draw a line to the sidewalk, form a curved line back to the fence and back to the sidewalk. After I check your m, I want you to make nine more.
Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /m/ in home or park? mean or kind? fish or mouse? more or less? arm or leg? Say: Let’s see if you can spot /m/ in some words. Rub your belly if you hear /m/: The, mad, monkey, made, many, messes.
Say: Let’s look at an alphabet book. Dr. Seuss tells us about mice singing midnight music in the moonlight" Read page 30, drawing out /m/. Ask children if they can think of other words that start with /m/. Ask each student to make up a song like the mice. Then have each student write their song with invented spelling and draw a picture of them singing their song with the mice. Display their work.
Show MAD and model how to decide if it is mad or sad: The M tells me to say /m/-/m/-/m/ and rub my belly, so this word is mmm-ad. You try some: MIX: fix or mix? GREET: meat or greet? FATE: mate or fate? MAKE: make or cake? MINE: fine or mine?
For assessment, distribute the worksheet. Students color the pictures that begin with M. Call students individually to read the phonic cue words from step #8.

Worksheet:

https://free4classrooms.com/free/free-beginning-sounds-worksheet-letter-m/

References:

Logan Boyd: Eat Yummy Foods With M.

https://lolomakayla99.wixsite.com/mysite/eat-yummy-foods-with-m

Hannah Ayers: Popping with the Letter P!

https://ayershk.wixsite.com/mysite/emergent-literacy

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