Meals that Make Me "Mmm" 

 

Rationale: This lesson is designed to help children identify /m/, the phoneme represented by M. Students will learn to recognize /m/ in spoken words by learning meaningful representation; kids love talking about their favorite foods (AKA foods that make them go, “Mmm”). Students will learn 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. Lastly, students will learn how to write the uppercase M and lowercase m.

 

Materials:

• Tongue Tickler: My mother makes many mouthwatering meals for me.

• Primary paper & pencils

• If You Give a Moose a Muffin by Laura Numeroff

• Word cards: MILK, LEMON, PUMPKIN, MUFFIN, MELON, OATMEAL, MACARONI, MANGO & BANANA, CAKE,

  CHICKEN, YOGURT

• Assessment worksheet & markers, crayons, colored pencils

 

Procedures:

1. Why: “Learning to recognize the letters of the alphabet and the sound each one makes is very important because this knowledge represents the building blocks of language. In this lesson, we’re going to learn the letter M and its sound. The M consonant sound is made by lightly pressing your lips together while making the ‘mmm’ sound, like you just ate something really yummy!”

2. Review/Background Knowledge: “Let’s start by reciting all of the letters of the alphabet together...We just listed twenty-six letters! That seems like a lot, but today we’re just going to focus on one of those letters.”

3. How: “I am going to call out different kinds of food. If you like the food I say, I want you to say, ‘Mmm.’ Ready?” (List a variety of foods that kids tend to like and dislike.) “Did you all notice what your mouth did when you made the ‘Mmm’ sound in response to the foods you enjoy to eat? You pressed your lips together and kept  your mouth closed. That is what we do when we make the letter M’s sound.”

4. Model: “I’m going to show you how you can find that ‘Mmm’ sound in words. ‘To find the treasure box, we need to look at the map.’ I heard /m/ in one of those words. I heard /m/ inmap. Listen closely. (Pronounce the word stretched out and slowly.) Mmm-aa-p. Did you see how my lips were pressed together and how my mouth was closed when I made the ‘Mmm’ sound? Mmm-aa-p.”

5. Practice: “Let’s practice all together now! Let’s all say, ‘My mother makes many mouthwatering meals for me.’”...“That’s tricky to say with all of those ‘Mmm’’s isn’t it?”

6. Model: “Now I am going to show you how to write the uppercase and lowercase letter M. To make the uppercase M, we start at the sidewalk, go way up to the rooftop, bounce down to the fence, go back up to the rooftop, and end by coming all the way back down to the sidewalk. To make the lowercase m, we start at the sidewalk and then make two humps that bounce up to touch the fence.”

7. Practice: (Give each student one piece of primary paper & a pencil.) I want you to try your best to make 8 uppercase M’s and 8 lowercase m’s. (Use the word cards to see if the students can successfully identify words that have the /m/ sound in them.) “Do hear the /m/ sound in _____? What about in _____? If you hear the /m/ sound in _____, pretend you’re eating. If you hear the /m/ sound in _____, ‘catch a bubble’ in your mouth like you have a mouth full of food.” ...etc.

8. Whole Texts: (Read the story to the students after you give a book talk.) Book talk: “A big hungry moose shows up at a young boy’s house. The boy wants the moose to feel welcome, so he gives the moose a muffin. Of course the moose is going to want jam to go on his muffin. The moose eats and eats and eats until every single muffin is gone! Of course the moose is going to want more. Let’s read the story to see what the moose and the boy do when they are all out of muffins to eat.”

9. Assess Students Individually: (Give the both worksheets to each student.) “Read the directions printed on the top of each worksheet. Please bring me your two worksheets when you are finished. If you have any further questions, please let me know; I am here to help you.” (If you don’t have enough time to have the students do both worksheets, just have each student complete whichever one you prefer more. Another option would be to have the students simply circle the pictures rather than coloring them.

 

Resources:

Dr. Bruce Murray, Emergent Literacy Design: Brush Your Teeth with F

http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/sightings/murrayel.html

Sherell Brown, Making M&M’s With Mike

http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/cultivations.html

Numeroff, Laura. If You Give a Moose a Muffin. Harper Collins, 1991. 32 pp. Felicia Bond.

https://www.slideshare.net/mol_by/if-you-give-a-moose-a-muffin-presentation?from_action=save

Assessment worksheets:

http://sioncoltd.com/m-sound-worksheets.html/brilliant-ideas-of-m-sound-worksheets-with-letter-template http://sioncoltd.com/m-sound-worksheets.html/awesome-collection-of-m-sound-worksheets-also-layout