Phonological Awareness in Four Fur Feet by Margaret Wise Brown

My main focus was to teach phonemic awareness in the initial letter sound /f/--  however in a sense this lesson also teaches alliteration. This provided a smooth transition in teaching a new lesson as it  incorporated some skills we had just learned.


In this lesson, children will actively participate in the read aloud of Four Fur Feet  by Margaret Wise then play a copy cat game which correlates to the text. The lesson was introduced by having the children repeat the title of the book after me. Then we established that the initial letter sound /F/ was heard most frequently in the title. I then read the book to the class and told them to pay close attention listening to the sounds heard in the words in the book. I stopped at certain areas in the book to go over some similar sounds. After reading the book, I used my word flash cards. Children would repeat the words I said, then answer if the words some similar or different. If the card is different, they would answer how/where in the word is it different?


Based upon my observations, children were easily able to participate in the copy cat game. I believe that this is because children have had a lot of practice identifying initial letter sounds and this has truly helped them to succeed with this skill. At this point, I have three children who are having difficulty but this may be related to their age or other additional factors which hinder their learning. I will continue to practice this skill with them throughout the year.

I feel that if I had worked in small groups opposed to as a class children who are struggling may have had an opportunity to succeed more in this activity. This way I could have spent longer periods of time explaining where in word sounds similar or different.