Wesley Heights, Year One
Johnson/White/Oliver – Meagan Cascone
Learning Objective/Exit Outcomes:
- Students will be able to identify the word family a word belongs in.
- Students will be able to recognize the “ot, at, and it” word families.
- Students will be able to come up with words that fit in each word family.
- Students will use body percussion to assess retention of core subject knowledge.
State Standards:
ELAGSEKRF2 Demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes).
- Recognize and produce rhyming words.
ELAGSEKRF3 Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
- Demonstrate basic knowledge of one to one letter-sound correspondences for each consonant.
- Demonstrate basic knowledge of long and short sounds for the given major vowels.
- Distinguish between similarly spelled words by identifying the sounds of the letters that differ.
ESGMK.CR.1 Improvise melodies, variations, and accompaniments.
- Improvise simple body percussion patterns.
- Improvise soundscapes (e.g. weather, animals, other sound effects).
- Improvise using various sound sources (e.g. electronic sounds, found sounds, body percussion, classroom instruments).
Integration Area/Subject:
ELA/ Music
Materials/Playing Space:
The students remained in their desks for this activity.
Description:
The four types of body percussion we focused on during this activity were clapping, stomping, chest drumming, and hand swiping. When the PAIR specialist set up the activity, she had a discussion with the class about different music terms that could be used to describe the different percussive sounds, such as volume, tempo, rhythm, and quality.
The PAIR specialist told the students that each word family would have their own body percussion sound. The “at” family would be hand swipes, the “ot” family would be chest drums, and the “it” family would be claps.
The teacher and the PAIR specialist would then call out different words from these families and the students would have to show, with their body percussion, what family the word belonged to. For example, if the word said was “mat,” then the students would do hand swipes. If the word was “sit,” the students would clap.
After several rounds of this, the teacher or PAIR Specialist would then call on a student. This student would have to show them one form of the body percussion. They would then have to come up with a word that fit in that family. For example, if the student that the teacher called on was using chest drums, the student would then have to say a word in the “ot” family, like “hot.” This allowed the students to determine both the family and the words that belonged in that family.
Notes:
To more deeply integrate this lesson, have students give different words from the word families learned and write them on the board, in groups of four like a measure of 4/4 notes. Then challenge the class to “play” the word family music across the board. It is important to give the class a tempo to keep across the measures of word “music.” Then, play with volume, telling students to “play” the “ot” family words louder than the other words, etc.