Franklin Kindergarteners Catch Some Zzz’s

Franklin Kindergartners in Miss Leishman’s class had a great time pronouncing their O’s and Z’s while learning how to phonetically spell.

In today’s lesson the class began by matching pictures that started with the specific letter sound they were learning. For example, they would match the letter “Z” to zebra. Then they danced along to a video that helped them understand how the various sounds are formed. As the sound for “Y” was played in the video, the class would jump up and yell “Yuh!” (the sound for Y). They did similar actions for other letters as well, including practicing the “Z” sound by pretending to nap and catch some “zzz’s”.The dancing and the pretend nap were all in good fun, but allowed for diverse ways of teaching so that all different types of learners, from visual to mental, could understand the concept.

Miss Leishman’s learning target for this lesson was based on phonetic awareness. What she decided to focus on was understanding initial sounds. This follows the Kindergarten Language Arts core standard that states, “Spell simple words phonetically, drawing on knowledge of sound-letter relationships.”

After the students saw how the focus letters sounded, they were able to read sentences as a class that featured the sound, helping them to understand how the sounds formed the words they were reading. They were also able to do some individual work, where they circled pictures that matched the letter sounds.

The kindergartens worked hard today and Miss Leishman prepared a fun, interactive lesson that is sure to help her students establish great spelling habits.