Lesson Plan 4

The last session for January was the letter 'S'.

Chocolate Rain

No there was no rain.

To start the lesson, we tutors usually sing a song. Of late, none of the songs were really noteworthy (hence the exclusion from the blog entries) but this lesson's song was extremely helpful in cognitive learning. Some of us may remember the nursery hymn If All the Raindrops, and this lesson's adopted a Filipino version. I'll put it here, together with a very rough translation.

"Kung ang ulan ay puro tsokolate (If all the raindrops turned into chocolate)

O kay tamis ng ulan (Oh how sweet that would be)

Ako’y lalabas at ako’y nganganga (I'd go outside with my mouth open wide)

A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a (A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a )

O kay tamis ng ulan." (Oh how sweet that would be)

This song served as an aid for reviewing past sounds ('M' and 'A'). Now I was able to give the letters another layer of meaning for my student Arvin. The 'M' sound would henceforth be known as the "eating sound" ("mmm"), and the 'A' sound would likewise be the "rain sound" (named after the song; "a-a-a...-a"). This gave me an idea for the session's lesson, 'S', whose sound I called a "snake's sound" (fo when a snake hisses; "sss").

Kapag Sabado and the Wordless Picture Book

This lesson's storybook was entitled "Kapag Sabado" (When It's Saturday). This story tells us of a boy named Santino who eats food that begins with the letter 'S' on Saturdays.

The wordless picture book, "Masayang Maglaro sa Ulan" (It's Fun to Play in the Rain) illustrates how a schoolgirl gets caught in the rain, decides that it's fun to play in it, and gets down with a fever as a result.

After reading the story, I had Arvin answer a few reading comprehension questions, all of the answers began with the letter 'S', to better help in remembering the sound. Some words used to help with the lesson were 'Santino', 'Sabado' (Saturday), 'saging' (banana), 'sardinas' (sardines), and 'sorbetes' (ice cream).

Phonological Awareness

Another activity we had that day was a vocabulary-development exercise. I printed and pictures of objects that started with the letters 'M', 'A' and 'S' and stuck them on the six faces of a cube made of illustration board. The rules I gave Arvin were simple: He had to roll the die, select a picture on the face that was right-side-up, and place it in a column that was labelled with the three letters. Before placing the pictures on the corresponding columns, I had him tell me what the picture was, to be sure we were on the same page.

Our last activity was similar in nature. There were two piles of cards: one pile was a pile of pictures, and the other was a pile of labels of the pictures. Arvin had to identify them and match them together. Some words were repetitive, to better remember the past lessons, like the worlds 'sama' and 'sama-sama'. Both words mean 'together', the former denoting at least two people, and the latter denoting a much larger group.