Lesson 4: Rrrrrrrrrr

I LOVE pirates. So naturally, when it came time to teach integrated teaching-letters-and-drama-simultaneously lesson, the letter R OBVIOUSLY meant PIRATES in my mind. I was so excited to teach this lesson, and I was SO sad when I couldn't find the bucket of jewels that I had prepared (it literally disappeared!) for the lesson, but once again, I don't think the children were that disappointed.

Unfortunately I spent waaaay too long simply naming the pirate ship in step 1 with the morning class, so I felt that the rest of the lesson was a little rushed. In addition, I had imagined the students to collaborate at their tables and create one central unified flag, however, I forgot that these were kindergarteners that I was working with, so the flags ended up being simply a collection of random drawings without much communication at all. This collaboration thing really is harder than I thought it would be.

So I totally thought this was in my lesson plan, but it must have been in a draft that somehow didn't make it to the final even though I thought it was there (????) but I had the students pretend that an enemy ship was attacking and we brainstormed ideas of how to get them to leave. Here is a clip of the morning class fighting off the enemy ship with all kinds of weapons they could think of:

The afternoon class was full of ideas of how to fight off the enemy pirate ship. I asked them if they could think of words that had the r sound that we could use to fight off our enemies. One student suggested that we could build a giant robot, and to my surprise, the class began building off of each other saying things like "I'll make the feet!" or "Here is the head!" etc. It was fascinating to watch their imaginations come to life! Naturally, we sent the robot off the plank and it destroyed the enemy pirate ship. Victory was ours!

Instead of searching for letter Rs around the room since I thought that would get crazy if some students finished before others, I made a separate flag specifically for the letter R and had all of the students write an upper case and lower case R on it and continue working on their own flags when they were done. Here they are at work:

I really enjoyed this lesson. Although it was far from perfect, I think the students had a good time, and hopefully they won't ever forget what sound the letter r makes!

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Casey Greenwood

BYU Arts Bridge

Kindergarten

Lesson: R

Strand: Create, Perform

Standards:

• CR.1: Develop imagination to create artistic ideas and work.
• CR.2: Arrange the physical playing space to communicate mood, time, and locale.
• CR.5: Create character through physical movement, gesture, sound, and/or speech and facial expression.
• P.5: Use voice to communicate meaning through volume, pitch, tone, rate, and clarity.

Objective: Students will show their ability to recognize and write the letter R and pronounce it in words and will demonstrate their ability to bring an imaginary character to life physically and vocally by pretending to be pirates on a pirate ship and by selecting and writing the letter R to get to the treasure.

Materials needed: Paper, crayons/markers, projector and appropriate computer access/connection cables, bucket of rhinestones, papers with many different letters and numbers written on them

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Hook: Arrange the tables and chairs to be the boundaries of a pirate ship. Help everyone get into character by pretending to be on a pirate ship, swaying with the waves of the ocean. On the projector, show the letter R and have everyone say “AAARRRRRRRRR” like pirates.

Step 1: Group practice. Think of some names or words with the class that start with R and choose one among the words to name the ship. Some examples might be Ruth, Rufus, Ruby, Rhino, Rex, etc. Have the class vote by saying “RRRRRRR” for the name they think is best! The one with the loudest cheer wins.

Step 2: Individual/group practice. Show some more examples of things that start with R or have R in it on the projector and remind the students of the words that you thought of together as a class. Some more examples of pirate-related words include Rubies, paRRot, Royal, FiRe, etc. Hand each student a sheet of paper and give them access to crayons or markers and have them design their own flag for the pirate ship. The flag should have the letter R on it somewhere and a picture of something that starts with R or has R in it (or it could even be a red flag because red starts with R). While the students are coloring, the teacher should scatter numbers and letters around the room. This could also be done in groups of 3 or 4 - students could make a flag together.

Step 3: Assessment. R marks the spot! Tharrrr be treasure near these waters. When they are finished with their flag, they should individually look around the classroom to find a letter R among all the other letters and numbers that are scattered around the classroom. When they find the letter R, they should bring it to the teacher who will reward them with their very own ruby rhinestone!