Bum, Bum, Beat the Drum

Emergent Literacy
By: Glenna Neilson

    Children need experience with sorting words and pictures to build letter and sound recognition. This lesson will help children to identify /b/.
    They will be able to find /b/ in spoken words and learn how to write the graphemic representation b.

    Picture of drum with B in it, poster with "Brad baked banana bread for Betty" on it, primary paper and pencil, picture page with bread, cereal,
    bear, fox, butterfly, mouse, box, house, ball,
and dog, journal, Where Does the Brown Bear Go? and crayons.

    1. Introduce the lesson by talking about the alphabet and what sounds the letters of the alphabet make when they are in a word. Today we are
     going to find out how our mouth moves when we say the sound for the letter B. The sound says /b/. Now let's see if we can find the /b/ sound i
     this word. "Tub" /t/, /t/ /u/, /t/ /u/ /b/. There it is! You can find this sound at the beginning, middle or end of a word. Everyone say /b/. Now say it
    again and let's see what our mouths do when we say this sound. What did your mouth do?

    2. Have any of you ever beaten on a drum before? Well when you beat on a drum it can make a /b/ sound. Let's all try beating our drums by
     slapping our hand on our lap and making the /b/ sound. Make sure your mouths are moving the way we talked about when you beat your

    3. Now we are going to try the tongue twister I have on this poster board. I will say it and point to the words, and then we will practice it
    together. "Brad baked banana bread for Betty." Now everyone try it. Now we are going to try beating our /b/ drums every time we hear the /b/
    sound in a word. (Do this three times).

    4. Now we are going to use the primary paper and pencil to try and write the letter b. We are going to start our pencils at the rooftop and go
    straight down to the sidewalk. Now bounce back up to the fence, and loop out, around and back to the sidewalk. After looking to make sure all
    the students are on the right track, let them do it nine more times. Remember that whenever you see b by itself it makes the /b/ sound like
    beating on your drum.

    5. Now we are all going to try and find the /b/ sound in the words I call out. Beat on your drum if you hear /b/: lion, bear, big, small, chair, bed,
     cub, come, corn, cob, car, cab.

    6. Now we are going to read a book. There are a lot of different animals in this book. There is a white cat, a brown bear, a red fox, and many
    other animals. Let's find out where these animals go "when the lights go down on the city streets" by reading Where Does the Brown Bear
Read Where Does the Brown Bear Go? by Nikki Weiss aloud to the class. Have the students beat their drums whenever they hear /b/.
    Then have them draw a picture of a bear and write about their bear using inventive spelling.

    7. For an assessment give the student the picture page and have them circle the words that have the /b/ sound in them.

    Grose, Claudia; Hupert, Naomi; Garro, Luisa Costa; Romero, Olga. Bank Street's Guide to Literacy. <http://www.bnkst.edu/literacyguide/main.html>.
    Weiss, Nikki. Where Does the Brown Bear Go? Greenwillow, 1989.

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