Hands-on Phonics Lesson for an Autistic Classroom: The Letter B

This is the second of 26 articles about how to teach autistic children the alphabet and the phonetic sounds associated with each letter. This week's lesson plan is on the letter B. The lesson plan includes phonics instruction, writing practice, hands-on activity sheets, and an arts-and-crafts activity. A book of choice featuring the letter B is also included.

The first site is www.starfall.com. This site includes several worksheets for the letter B. The words associated with the letter for the letter B are ball, boy, and butterfly. The site offers two sheets that can be run off. The first sheet is for phonics and writing instruction and the second sheet is for writing practice of the uppercase and lower case B.

The book featuring the letter B is Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See. A free copy of the book can be downloaded at www.kindercritter.com/freebies.htm#brownbear. This book can be ran off as a class project or as an individual project. Each page is blank and gives the child the chance to fill out each page according to the color of the animal. Of course most autistic children will need hand over hand instruction when doing activities requiring fine motor skills, such as writing or coloring.

Autistic children need a larger amount of hands on practice than most children, so it is necessary to provide this practice via the means of file folder games. The first such game can be found at www.mormonchic.com/crafty/filefolders.asp. Click on the image of the teddy bear and you can print a blank teddy bear, then a choice of clothing, such as a military outfit and a doctor's outfit. The best way to do this is to print the teddy bear and clothing , then to laminate both for long term use. Of course the blank teddy bear, would be velcroed with soft velcro, and the outfits would be velcroed with hard velcro. This way, the activity can be used over and over.

The second file folder game deals with numbers. This game involves matching dots on a teddy bear with the corresponding numbers. The game can be found at www. activity village.uk.co/bears. There is also a sheet that can be downloaded and printed and made into a board game. The game board has six teddy bears, each with dots from one to six. A large foam dice works best and can be rolled to match the corresponding number on the game board. My children each had a laminated game board and would place a counter on the board when the dice landed on a corresponding number. Younger kids will not care that everyone; board is the same, however you might want to mix the boards up for older children who will notice this.

There are several arts activities at www.dltk-kids.com. Click on the crafts link and then click on the bear picture. You can chose to make a bear face out of a paper plate or to make a teddy bear art project with fasteners so the teddy bear will move.

My autistic class loved these ideas and they were attentive to the lesson because of the hands on nature of the activities for the letter B. Next week's lesson plan will be on the lesson C and it's phonetic sounds.
.