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Derek D. Digs in the Dirt

Emergent Literacy Design

Ivy Hughes

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Rationale:

This lesson will help children identify /d/, the phoneme represented by D. Students will learn to

recognize /d/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation (digging in the dirt) and the

letter symbol D, practice finding /d/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /d/ in phonetic cue

reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters. This lesson will allow students to

identify the letter D effortlessly. 

Materials:

  • Primary paper

  • Pencil

  • Chart with “Derek digs in the dirt to find dragons”

  • Drawing paper and crayons

  • Danny the Dinosaur by Syd Hoff

  • Word cards with DOG, FOG, DIG, FIG, PROP, DROP, HARD, FOLD, FELT, 

  • Assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /d/ 

  • Drawing paper and crayons

Procedures:

  1. Say: our language is full of so many interesting letters! We could even think of it as a secret code! And sometimes it can be tricky to learn what the letters stand for- our mouth moves as we say words. Today, were going t work on spotting the mouth move /d/. We spell /d/ with letter D. D looks like doodling in the dirt and /d/ sounds like the sound you make if you’re having a hard time digging in the dirt.

  2. Lets pretend to dig a hole in the dirt, grab your shovel, and dig! (act out digging in the dirt). Do you notice how your mouth is shaped? (touch mouth focusing on the bottom lip). When we say /d/ like “Derek D. digs in the dirt” we touch the roof of our mouth with our tongue and almost touch our teeth together.

  3. Let me show you how to find /d/ in the word dig. I’m going to stretch our dig super slowly and listen for the digging sound. D-D-D-iii-ggg. One more time slower, D-D-D-iii-gg. There! I felt my tongue touch the roof of my mouth and my lips almost touched! I can feel myself digging for dragons when I say the letter d

  4. Lets look at our chart and try our tongue tickler! Derek D. is a little boy and he loves dragons! He really wants a pet dragon, so here is our tongue tickler: “Derek D. digs in the dirt to find dragons” everyone say it 3 times together, now say it twice to your partner really stretching out our /d/ sound at the beginning of words. “DDDerek dddigs in the dddirt to find dddragons” 

  5. Take our primary paper and pencil. Ask if anyone can come up to the board and write it, if not, teacher should write example and say we use letter D to spell /d/. say capital D looks like a dragon doodled in the dirt. You start by drawing a straight line from the roof to the sidewalk, then a curved line, similar to a backwards c to connect the top and bottom of the line. Then, for lowercase D, Start at the top of the fence and make a little c between the fence and sidewalk, then draw a straight line from the rooftop to the sidewalk that connects it to the little c. After I check both and you get a dragon sticker, continue writing 9 more just like it. 

  6. Now use word cards with the word dig and model how to decide if it is dig or fig. Call on students to answer and explain their answer. Do you hear /d/ in dig or swim? Lift or damp? Hard orsoft? Deep or shallow? Odd or thin? Now show me how you dig when you hear /d/ : Doodle, word, pool, date, paid, at, red, lid, dirt

  7. “Now that we know the sound that the letter D makes, and how to write it, let’s look at this book so we can practice finding the letter”.  Let’s look at Danny the Dinosaur where Syd Hoff tells us of a little boy, Danny and his pet dinosaur. They have a lot of fun together, but a dinosaur is no ordinary pet, let’s see how Danny finds a way to hide his friend and keep him from making messes. (read aloud and show pictures) Now taking out your colored pencils and paper, draw your own dinosaur and let’s draw your own extraordinary pet. See if you can think of a crazy name that begins with D.(display work at the end of the lesson) 

  8. Now use word cards with the word dig and model how to decide if it is dig or fig. “The D tells me to dig in the dirt, /d/, so this word is ddd-ig, hot. Now you try some. Once I show you a card I will give you two options and you have to tell me which one is correct. Is this word dog or fog? Is this word drop or prop? Is this word fold or felt? 

  9. For assessment, distribute worksheet. Students check the picture that start with the letter D. Call on students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step 8. 

References:

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