Clap Syllable

Language, level: Elementary

Materials Required: Silly Sara book, Words list
Activity Time: 30-45 minutes
Language Arts Standards and Benchmarks:
Early Elementary Standard 1: Meaning and Communication
All students will read and comprehend general and technical
material.
Benchmark # 4: Employ multiple strategies to decode words as
they construct meaning, including the use of phonemic
awareness, letter-sound associations, pictures cues, context clues,
and other recognition aids.
Objectives:
1. Students will be able to identify the number of syllables in a
word.
2. Students will be able to count the beats in a word.
4. Students will be able to realize that one beat -words are shorter
than three beat words.
Materials:
Silly Sara book.
Words list
Procedures:
Anticipatory set: I will explain to the children how syllables can
help them when they read and write.
This Monday is the Memorial Day. How do I spell Memorial? Memo-ri-al . . . it has four parts. I knew that it had four parts because
I heard four beats. This will make spelling long words and reading
them much easier for me.
The lesson:
I will introduce the book Silly Sara and tell them that for long
words, I will clap while I am reading them and count the beats.
Questions:

To make sure the students understand what they will be going to

do, I will ask them questions such as: Is there difference between
long and short words?
What is the difference between smoothie and lollipop?
Which one has more beats?
Modeling:
While I am reading the book Silly Sara, I will choose the following
words that have more than one syllable (beats): smoothie (smoothie), lollipop (lol-li-pop), biggest (big-gest), sandwich(sand-wich),
gobbled(gob-bled). For instance, I would say the word lollipop
while clapping 3 times. I would then help the students realize that
there are three beats in the word lollipop.
Guided Practice :
I will say my name (Howayda). Then, I will say my name again,
but this time I will clap the syllables. I will say the name of each
student, and then clap the syllables as I say the names a second
time. After that I will invite students to join in clapping with me.
When I feel that students are catching on, I will say some last
names. I will also refer to syllables as beats, since the word
syllable might be foreign to some students.
Independent Practice:
I will read the words from the words list. Each word, I will read,
they will clap the syllable, and decide how many beats are in such
a word.
Closure:
I will wrap the lesson up by having each student stand up and
clap their first and last name. While each student is doing this, the
others will count the number of beats. On the board, I will write
their first and last names, and the number of beats with which the
students came out. When the whole class is finished, we will see
who has the most and least beats in their name.
Assessment:
To assess the students, I will use words other than names. Words
such as pencil, summer, beautiful, computer, paper, sharpener,
Monday, holiday, vacation, calendar, telephone, ruler, eraser,
Winter, season, sunshine, morning, breakfast, September,
Christmas. Students are familiar with these words. Thus, they are
good to use for assessment. I will have children clap for each

syllable I say. Then I will pick on students to tell how many beats
they heard for such a word. To figure out if they have understood
the lesson, I will not clap with them.