Rationale: This lesson will help students identify /d/, the phoneme represented by D. During this lesson, students will begin to recognize /d/ in spoken words by learning a sound analogy, the “d d d” sound of a dinosaur dancing, and the letter symbol D, practice finding /d/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /d/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.

 

Materials: Primary paper and pencil; chart with “Danny and Debbie the dinosaurs danced to drums”; drawing paper with crayons; Dr. Seuss's ABC (Random House, 1963); word cards with DARK, DING, PRANCE, DOOR, and CROWN; assessment worksheet identifying pictures that begin with /d/ (link below).

 

Procedures:

1. *Say* The English language and alphabet are very tricky to learn. It is very tricky to match the way our mouths move with the correct letter the sound matches with. Today we are going to work on figuring out how our mouth moves to the pronunciation of letter /d/. We spell /d/ with the letter D. D looks like the belly of a dinosaur and makes the sound of a dinosaur walking, “d d d”.

 

2. Let's dance like a dinosaur and make the loud “d” sound for their stomping feet! /d/ /d/ /d/. When you say /d/, where is your tongue in your mouth? Is it touching the roof of your mouth behind your top teeth? When we say /d/, our tongue is touching the roof of our mouth behind our front teeth.

 

3. I am going to show you how to find the letter /d/ in the word red. I am going to stretch out red slowly and I want you to listen for my dancing dinosaur noise. Rrr-e-e-ed. Slower: Rrrr-e-e-e-ddd. I heard it! I felt my tongue hit the roof of my mouth behind my front teeth! Dancing dinosaur /d/ is in red!

 

4. Let's try something called a tongue tickler! One day, Danny the dinosaur heard his friend Debbie listening to drums. Danny could not help himself, the music made him dance! Danny asked Debbie if he could dance to the drums with her. She replied, “I would love to”! Danny and Debbie the dinosaurs danced to drums. Here is our tickler: “Danny and Debbie the dinosaurs danced to drums”. Let's say it three times together. Now let's say it one more time but I want you all to stretch the /d/ at the beginning of each word. “Ddddanny anddd Ddddebbie the dddinosaurs dddanced to dddrums.” Alright, last time. I want you to break the /d/ off of the words: “/D/anny an/d/ /D/ebbie the /d/inosaurs /d/anced to /d/rums.”

 

5. *Take out a pencil and primary paper* We use letter D to spell /d/. Capital D looks like the body of a dinosaur (refer to previous picture). Now let's think about the lowercase d. Imagine a dime rolling over to a domino. The dime is the little c and the domino is the straight line that closes off the little c. Now let’s try writing a lowercase d, start with a little c at the fence then draw a straight line down from the rooftop to the sidewalk. Let’s see everyone's letter d! I will come around and stamp your paper if it was done correctly. If you receive a stamp, I want you to write 9 more lowercase d’s.

*Bonus* To draw a capital D, you start at the rooftop, go straight down to the sidewalk, pick back up and make a half circle leading back up to the rooftop!

 

6.  *I will choose a student to answer some questions, I will also ask them how they knew the correct answer* Do you hear /d/ in rock or hard? Eggs or salad? Dirty or clean? Zebra or donkey? Drive or fly? Now I want to know if you can spot my mouth making /d/ in a few words. Dance like a dinosaur if you hear /d/: Daisy, my, dog, does, not, like, digging, in, the, yard.

 

7. *Say* “Now let’s look at an alphabet book together! Dr. Seuss explains to us that there are a bunch of dogs that are driving crazily in their cars to get to a very special event!”  I will read out a page exaggerating the letter /d/. I will then ask my students if they can tell me more words that have the letter /d/ in them. Next, I will have my students come up with a crazy dog name, all names have to have /d/ in them! Ex: Dazzling Daisy, Dancing Dixie, Dopey Doug. Once my students have created their crazy dog names, they will write the name at the top of their paper (Without any spelling help) and draw their crazy dog with crayons. I will hang their creations in the classroom.

 

8. I will show DOG and model how to tell it says dog, not fog: The D tells me to dance like a dinosaur, /d/, so this word is ddd-og, dog. Now I want you all to try some! DARK: dark or mark? DING: thing or ding? PRANCE: dance or prance? DOOR: floor or door? CROWN: crown or down? (I am including word cards that do not have the letter d in them to really test my students)

9. For assessment, I will distribute a worksheet. My students will color in the pictures that begin with the letter D. I will also individually call up students to read the phonetic cue words from #8.