Rationale: This lesson will help children identify /l/, the phoneme represented by L. Students will learn to recognize /l/ in spoken words by learning a sound analogy (lapping water) and the letter symbol L, practice finding /l/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /l/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.

Materials:

1. Chart with tongue tickler: "Lenny the lion lapped the liquid from the lake.”

2. Primary paper (one piece per student)

3. Pencils

4. Crayons

5. Word cards with LAD, LICK, LAMP, LOOK, and LAKE

6. Letterbox Letters and three Elkonin boxes: l, i, d, p, a, c, k

7. Practice worksheet identifying pictures with /l/ (URL below).

8. Dr. Seuss's ABC (Random House, 1963)

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 the mouth move /l/. We spell /l/ with letter L. L looks like a really long tongue drinking water, and /l/ sounds like a dog drinking that water.

2. Let's pretend to lap our water so we can find the L. /l/, /l/, /l/. Notice where your tongue is? (Touching roof of mouth). When we say /l/, we blow air out of our throat and touch our tongue to the roof of our mouth and our lips stay open!

3. Let me show you how to find /l/ in the word left. I'm going to stretch left out in super slow motion and listen for my lapping. Lll-e-e-eft. Slower: Lll-e-e-e-f-t There it was! I felt my tongue touch the roof of my mouth. Lapping /l/ is in left.

4. Let's try a tongue tickler. Lenny the lion is really thirsty after being in the sun all day and playing with his friends at the desert. That’s when he decides that he is going to go get himself water at the lake. He was so thirsty that he laps it up until the lake is almost dry! Here’s our tickler: " Lenny the lion lapped the liquid from the lake." Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /l/ at the beginning of the words. " Lllenny the lllion lllapped the llliquid from the lllake." Try it again, and this time break it off at the beginning of the word: "/l/enny the /l/ion /l/apped the /l/iquid from the /l/ake.”

5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We use letter L to spell /l/. Capital L looks like a tongue lapping water. Let's write the lowercase letter l. Start at the rooftop. Start to draw a line right down the sidewalk and finish at the bottom. That’s it! I want to see everybody's l. 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 /l/ in lake or pond? Lip or nose? Lead or ink? Lift or drop? Leap or jump? Say: Let's see if you can spot the mouth move /l/ in some words. Lap your water if you hear /l/: The lamb leaped over a log to run from the loud thunder.

7. Say: "Let's look at an alphabet book. Dr. Seuss tells us about a lion that’s eating a lollipop!" Read page 12, drawing out /l/. Ask children if they can think of other words with /l/. Ask them to make up an animal like lion or linteater. Then have each student write their silly name with invented spelling and draw a picture of their silly animal. Display their work.

8. Show LAD and model how to decide if it is lad or dad: The L tells me to lap my water, /l/, so this word is lll-ad, lad. You try some: LICK: lick or sick? LAMP: lamp or ramp? LOOK: book or look? LAKE: take or lake?

9. For practice, distribute the worksheet. Students color the pictures and circle the l in each word.

10. For assessment, have students complete short Letterbox Lesson with the words lid, pal, and lack. Call students individually to teacher’s desk to complete this. Also have students read the phonetic cue words from step #8.

 

References:

Bruce Murray, The Reading Genie

Mallory Kelley, Sally the Sneaky Snake.

Assessment worksheet

ABCMouse.com, “The Letter L Song”

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