3-5 year-old Lesson Plan 1
Kiowa Alphabet Song: This first lesson introduces young children to the sounds of Kiowa through a Kiowa Alphabet Song. Parents and teachers can download the lesson plan for specific details on how to describe the Kiowa Alphabet Song to young children, in Kiowa. In addition to the lesson plan itself, resources include a video with the song, then another video with the song and the corresponding written Kiowa words, and a handout for printing or for reference when teaching the Kiowa Alphabet Song to young children.
The Kiowa Alphabet shown here, in the Modified PMK Orthography, has 10 vowels and 22 consonants.
When teaching Kiowa to young children, consider their developmental capabilities. While it will be helpful for them to get to know the correspondence between the letter and the sound in Kiowa, children wouldn’t be expected to actually write in Kiowa until they can write functionally in English, which is around the 3rd grade.
One way to get young children familiar with the PMK Orthography or the Modified PMK Orthography would be to have the child practice writing their own name in Kiowa using the Kiowa sounds to correspond to the English sounds in their name OR to write their Kiowa Name in Kiowa and refer to themselves by their Kiowa Name.
About the PMK Orthography:
While the Kiowa Language historically was not written, and instead was used verbally and with accompanying sign language, in the 20th century, Kiowa linguist, Dr. Parker McKenzie created a writing system for Kiowa for the purposes of, as stated by Roy (2007, p. 141), “saving the Kiowa language was the most important facet of McKenzie’s vision. His development of an easy-to-use, typewriter accessible orthography made the Kiowa language available for the first time in written form in a manner the average person could use.”
For more information on the PMK Orthography, read: The Parker P. McKenzie Kiowa Orthography: How Written Kiowa Came Into Being on JSTOR available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25669727
About Modified PMK:
According to Gáuidòñ:gyà màutêmk’ì (Dane Poolaw), the original orthography created by the late Dr. Parker Paul McKenzie, the noted Kiowa elder, linguist, and historian, has been modified for the University of Oklahoma Kiowa Language courses in order to teach the sounds and reading more efficiently.
Changes include:
REPLACEMENT LETTERS: (g ts b d k’ t’ p’ ts’ ) take the place of former replacement letters (c ch f j q th v x) respectively. in addition of (ᵰ or ñ) as a 9th replacement letter.
NASAL MARKING: New letter ᵰ (or ñ) replaces underline for nasal sound
LENGTHENED VOWEL: colon (:) replaces overline for lengthened vowel
INTRUSIVE Y RULE: letter y inserted back into (gya gya kya k’ya) for ease of reading in as it was formerly (ga ca ka qa)
Lesson Plan
This lesson plan titled Kiowa Alphabet Song will help parents and teachers to introduce the sounds of Kiowa to young children through singing an original, modern Kiowa Alphabet Song.
Download the File below for your personal copy of Lesson Plan 1.
Handout
Use this handout to accompany the learning of the Kiowa words that correspond to each Kiowa sound.
Download the File below for your personal copy of Lesson 1 – Handout.
Color Version
Black & White Version (for Printing)