#3159. Clap Syllable

Language, level: Elementary
Posted Thu Jun 10 17:01:44 PDT 2004 by Howayda Bazzi (hjbazzi@aol.com).
University of Michigan Dearborn, Dearborn MI 48126
Materials Required: Silly Sara book, Words list
Activity Time: 30-45 minutes

Language Arts Standards and Benchmarks:
Early Elementary Standard 1: Meaning and Communication
All students will read and comprehend general and technical material.
Benchmark # 4: Employ multiple strategies to decode words as they construct meaning, including the use of phonemic awareness, letter-sound associations, pictures cues, context clues, and other recognition aids.

Objectives:

1. Students will be able to identify the number of syllables in a word.
2. Students will be able to count the beats in a word.
4. Students will be able to realize that one beat -words are shorter than three beat words.

Materials:
▸ Silly Sara book.
▸ Words list

Procedures:

Anticipatory set: I will explain to the children how syllables can help them when they read and write.
This Monday is the Memorial Day. How do I spell Memorial? Me-mo-ri-al . . . it has four parts. I knew that it had four parts because I heard four beats. This will make spelling long words and reading them much easier for me.
The lesson:
I will introduce the book Silly Sara and tell them that for long words, I will clap while I am reading them and count the beats.

Questions:
To make sure the students understand what they will be going to do, I will ask them questions such as: Is there difference between long and short words?
What is the difference between smoothie and lollipop?
Which one has more beats?

Modeling:
While I am reading the book Silly Sara, I will choose the following words that have more than one syllable (beats): smoothie (smoo-thie), lollipop (lol-li-pop), biggest (big-gest), sandwich(sand-wich), gobbled(gob-bled). For instance, I would say the word "lollipop" while clapping 3 times. I would then help the students realize that there are three beats in the word lollipop.

Guided Practice :
I will say my name (Howayda). Then, I will say my name again, but this time I will clap the syllables. I will say the name of each student, and then clap the syllables as I say the names a second time. After that I will invite students to join in clapping with me. When I feel that students are catching on, I will say some last names. I will also refer to syllables as beats, since the word syllable might be foreign to some students.

Independent Practice:
I will read the words from the words' list. Each word, I will read, they will clap the syllable, and decide how many beats are in such a word.

Closure:
I will wrap the lesson up by having each student stand up and clap their first and last name. While each student is doing this, the others will count the number of beats. On the board, I will write their first and last names, and the number of beats with which the students came out. When the whole class is finished, we will see who has the most and least beats in their name.

Assessment:
To assess the students, I will use words other than names. Words such as pencil, summer, beautiful, computer, paper, sharpener, Monday, holiday, vacation, calendar, telephone, ruler, eraser, Winter, season, sunshine, morning, breakfast, September, Christmas. Students are familiar with these words. Thus, they are good to use for assessment. I will have children clap for each syllable I say. Then I will pick on students to tell how many beats they heard for such a word. To figure out if they have understood the lesson, I will not clap with them.