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|     FALL/WINTER 2023 

|     SPRING/SUMMER 2023

 Making Muffins with M Emergent Literacy Lesson

By: Katie Brown

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

 

Materials: Primary paper and pencil; chart with “Mama makes muffins on mondays”; drawing paper and crayons; Dr. Seuss’s ABC (Random House, 1963); word cards with MUG, MAKE, WET, FROST, MILK, MAN; assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /m/ (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 /m/. We spell /m/ with letter . makes the noise “mmm”, just like the noise you make when you eat something yummy.

  2. Say: Now I want everyone to think of his or her favorite food. Once you have an image of your favorite food in your head I want you to rub your belly and say “mmm”. What happens to your lips when you say “mmm”? Your lips are pressed together. When we say /m/ our mouth stays closed.

  3. Say: Let me show you how to find /m/ in the word I am going to stretch out super slow motion and listen for the sound “mmm”. Mmm-oo-on. Slower: Mmm-ooo-n. There it was! I felt “mmm” while saying with my lips pressed together.

  4. Say: Lets try a tongue twister (on chart). “Mama makes muffins on Mondays.” Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /m/ at the beginning of the words. “Mmmama mmmakes mmmuffins on Mmmondays.” Try it again, and the time break it off the word: “ /m/ama /m/akes /m/uffins on /m/ondays.”

  5. (Have students take out primary paper and pencil) Say: We use letter to spell /m/. I will demonstrate how to write a lowercase . To make the lowercase m, we start at the sidewalk and then make two humps that bounce up to touch the fence. I want to see everybody’s lowercase I want you to make nine more just like it.

  6. Call on students to answer and tell you how they knew: Do you hear /m/ in or or or or Say: Let’s see if you can spot the mouth move /m/ in some words. Rub your belly if you hear /m/:

  7. Say: “Let’s look at an alphabet book. Dr. Seuss tells us about many mumbling mice making music in the moonlight.” As I read the page, draw /m/. Ask students if they can think of other words with /m/. Next ask them to make up a silly mice name like Muggles-moop-meh, or Mork-muslce-mook. Then have each student write their silly name with invented spelling and draw a picture of their silly mouse. Display their work.

  8. Show MUG and model how to decide if it is or The tells me to rub my belly “mmm”, /m/ so this word is Your try some: MAKE: or WET: or FROST: or MILK: or MAN: or

  9. For assessment, distribute the worksheet. Students are to complete the partial spelling and color the pictures that begin with Call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #8

 

Reference:

Brown, Sherell. Making M&Ms With Mike

https://sites.google.com/view/readingwithmsbrown/emergent-literacy

Assessment worksheet: http://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/m-begins2.htm

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