PANT LIKE A DOG WITH H

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

Materials: Primary paper and pencil; chart with “Haley hates having to eat half a hotdog”; drawing paper and crayons; Dr. Seuss’s ABC (Random House, 1963); word cards with HAT, HOW, FAIR, HERO, YELP, HAIL; assessment worksheet identifying pictures with/h/ (URL below). 

Procedures: 1. 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 /h/. We spell /h/ with letter H. H sort of has the long, square shape of a tongue, and /h/ is the sound we make when we pant like a dog with our tongues out. 

2. Let’s pretend to pant like a dog, /h/, /h/, /h/. [Pantomime panting like a dog] Notice your tongue is loose and doesn’t really touch the upper or lower part of your mouth much. When we say /h/, we blow a small puff of air from our mouths. 

3. Let me show you how to find /h/ in the word with. I’m going to stretch hat out in super slow motion and listen for my panting sound. H-h-h-a-a-t-t-t. Slower: H-h-ha-a-a-t-t-t. There is was! I felt my small puff of hair from my mouth. I can feel and hear the panting dog in /h/ in hat.

4. Let’s try a tongue twister [on chart]. “Haley hates having to eat half a hotdog.” Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /h/ at the beginning of the words. “Hhhaley hhhates hhhaving to eat hhhalf a hhhotdog.” Try it again, and this time break it off the word: “/h/ aley /h/ ates /h/ aving to eat /h/ alf a /h/ otdog.”

5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We use the letter H to spell /h/. Capital H looks has the long, square shape of a tongue. Let’s write the lowercase h. Start just below the rooftop. Draw a straight line all the way down to the sidewalk, then without picking up your pencil, draw a line back up to the fence. Make a curve at the fence, away from your first line, then continue the curve to make another straight line back down to the sidewalk. I want to see everybody’s h. After I put a smile on it, I want you to make nine more just like it. 

6. Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /h/ in yard or house? Help or stop? Love or hate? Fish or dog? Play or math? Say: Let’s see if you can spot the mouth move /h/ in some words. Pant like a dog if you hear /h/: The, hairy, horse, ran, into, the, house, and, ruined, the, happy, holiday, dinner. 

7. Say: “Let’s look at an alphabet book. Dr. Suess tells us about a silly hen that’s blind from wearing a hat as big as he is, and a hungry horse that takes advantage and eats the hen’s hay!” Read page 18, drawing out /h/. Ask them to make up a silly name for their horse that starts with an /h/ and a yummy food they think their horse would like to eat. Have them write their horse’s silly name with invented spelling and draw a picture of the food it’s going to eat. Display their work. 

8. Show HAT and model how to decide if it is hat or mat: The h tells me to pant like a dog, /h/, so this word is hhh-at, hat. You try some: HOW: how or cow? FAIR: hair or fair? HERO: zero or hero? YELP: help or yelp? HAIL: hail or fail?

9. For assessment, distribute the worksheet. Students are to complete the partial spellings and color the pictures that begin with H. Call students individually to complete the phonetic cue reading from step 8.

Reference: Assessment worksheet: https://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/h-begins2.htm

Murray, Dr. Bruce; The Reading Genie. http://wp.auburn.edu/rdggenie/ 

Myler, Erin https://erinmyler.wixsite.com/mysite/emergent-literacy-design

Dr. Seuss,  Dr. Seuss’s ABC (Random House, 1963)

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