Emergent Literacy
Making Muffins with M
An Emergent Literacy Design
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
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 sound analogy (eating muffins, Mmm!) 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 “Mom makes muffins for Molly on Monday”
-
Drawing paper and crayons
-
Word cards with MAKE, TALK, MAD, CAT, MEET
-
Assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /m/
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/ is a sound we make when we eat yummy muffins.
-
Let's pretend to eat a muffin, /m/, /m/, /m/. [Pantomime eating muffins] Notice what your mouth is doing? When we say /m/, we put our lips together to make the noise.
-
Let me show you how to find /m/ in the word meet. I'm going to stretch meet out in super slow motion and listen for my muffin. Mmm-e-e-t.. Slower: Mmm-e-e-t. There it was! I felt my lips close together. Muffin /m/ is in meet.
-
Let's try a tongue tickler [on chart]. Molly is having her birthday party on Monday. She doesn’t know what dessert she wants to have when her friends come over for the party. Her mom suggests muffins, and Molly thinks this is a great idea. Here’s our tickler: “Mom makes muffins for Molly on Monday.” Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /m/ at the beginning of the words. "MMMom mmmakes mmmuffins for MMMolly on MMMonday." Try it again, and this time break it off the word: "/M/om /m/akes /m/uffins for /M/olly on /M/onday”.
-
[Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We use letter M to spell /m/. Capital M and lowercase m look kind of similar. Let's write the lowercase letter m.
-
Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /m/ in make or lake? Talk or man? Mad or sad? Cat or mat? Meet or greet? Say: Let's see if you can spot the lips close /m/ in some words. Close your mouth if you hear /m/: The, man, went, into, the, mall.
-
Say: "Let's look at an alphabet book. Joan Sweeney tells us about a little girl who shows us her life on a map." Read page 10, drawing out /m/. Ask children if they can think of other words with /m/.
-
Show MAD and model how to decide if it is mad or sad: The M tells me to close my mouth, /m/, so this word is mmm-ad, mad. You try some: MIX: mix or fix? MEET: meet or feet? MIND: mind or find? MAKE: make or take? MAN: man or fan?
-
For assessment, distribute the worksheet. Students color the pictures that begin with M. Call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #8.
References:
https://elizabethkatewelch.wixsite.com/my-site-2/emergent-literacy-design
Worksheet:
https://twistynoodle.com/draw-a-line-to-the-matching-m-word-worksheet/
​
​
​
