Rationale:

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

Materials:

- Primary paper and pencil

- Tongue tickler chart with “Hairy Henry hears the horses' hoofs hit the hay”

- Drawing paper and crayons

- Dr. Seuss’s ABC (Random House, 1963—Letter H)

- Word cards with HAT, HIT, TAKE, HEAR, PORK, HOUSE

- Assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /h/ (URL below). 

Procedures:

1. Say: Our written language is a secret code. The tricky part is learning what letters stand for—the mouth moves as we say words. Today we’re going to work on spotting the mouth move /h/. We spell /h/ with letter H. H looks like when you stack your fingers on top of each other to create the horizontal line and your pointer fingers sticking out to create the vertical line, and /h/ sounds like you breathe out hard and blow hot air out of our mouths.

2. Let’s pretend we are making an H with our fingers. [Mimic H with hands]. Notice how your fingers are shaping the letter H? When we say /h/, we breathe out hard and blow hot air out of our mouths that sounds like we are saying the sound /h/. 

3. Let me show you how to find /h/ in the word had. I’m going to stretch had out in super slow motion and listen for my breath. Hhh-a-d. Slower: Hhh-aa-ddd. I heard it! I can feel myself breathing a hard /h/ sound and hot air came out when I said had.  

4. Let’s try a tongue tickler [on chart]. A horse jumps up in surprise when a rat ran across the floor and when he came back down, his hoofs hit the hay. Here’s our tickler: “Hairy Henry hears the horses' hoofs hit the hay.” Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /h/ at the beginning of the words. “Hhhairy Hhhenry hhhears the hhhorses’ hhhofs hhhit the hhhay.” Try it again, and this time break it off the word: “/h/airy /h/enry /h/ears the /h/orses’ /h/oofs /h/it the /h/ay. 

5. {Have students take out primary paper and pencil}. We use letter H to spell /h/. Capital H looks like when you stack your fingers on top of each other to create the horizontal line and your pointer fingers sticking out to create the vertical line. Let’s write the lowercase h. Start by drawing a line all the way down and come back up halfway and make an upside-down u. I want to see everybody’s h. After I put a check and 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 /h/ in hop or fun? Hand or toe? House or window? Hip or stop? Say: Let’s see if you can spot the mouth move /h/ in some words. Clap if you hear /H/: The, hungry, hen, laid, happy, eggs. 

7. Say: “Let’s look at an alphabet book. Dr. Suess tells us that the hungry horse eats hay and that the hen is wearing a large hat. Hooray! Hooray! Ask the children if they can think of other words with /h/. Ask them to make up a silly creature name like Hehen-heher-hehem, or hoorst-hab-hun. Then have each student write their silly name with invented spelling and draw a picture of their silly creature. Display their work. 

8. Show HOT and model how to decide if it is hot or pot: The H tells me to stack my fingers on top of each other to create the horizontal line and my pointer fingers sticking out to create the vertical line, /h/ so this word Hhh-ot, hot. You try some: HATE: hate or mate? HAND: hand or land? HEN: hen or ten? HILL: hill or pill? 

9. For assessment, write an uppercase H and then a lowercase h. Then, students color the pictures that begin with the h sound. Call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #8. 

References: 

Dr Seuss - ABC (Dr. Seuss Beginner Book Video) (Letter H) 

Jocelyn Cumbie, "Dazzling Danna Plays the Drums". https://jocelyncumbie.wixsite.com/my-site/emergent-literacy.

Assessment Worksheet:

https://free4classrooms.com/free-beginning-sounds-worksheet-letter-h/ 

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