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Oh no, we are late!!!

 

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Beginning Reading Lesson

Caroline Jones

 

Rationale:

This lesson teaches the long vowel correspondence a_e = /A/. In order for students to be able to read, they need to learn the tools and instructions to help them to decode words. Once students know how to decode words and pronounce phonemes, they have the appropriate tools to be able to read. The goal of this lesson is for students to understand the phoneme a_e = / A/, as well as, learn a physical representation of that phoneme that will help them to remember. In this lesson, students will learn by a Letter Box Lesson how to spell words with the phoneme a_e = /A/. In the LBL, the teacher will model for the students and explain how to decode words with this phoneme. Then the students can try to decode on their own. The ultimate goal of learning this phoneme is to decode words and add those decoded words to the reader’s sight vocabulary. 

 

Materials:

  • A picture with a tongue tickler that says: “Abe the ape can’t be late for his date!”

  • A graphic image of the Queen from The Princess Diaries saying, “A Queen is never late, everyone else is simply early.”

  • A cover-up critter

  • Letterboxes for the students

  • Letter manipulatives a, t, e, g, r, d, p, l, n, b, z, s, c

  • A list of spelling words on index cards to read: ate, grade, plane, blaze, scrape

  • A decodable text James and the Good Day

  • An assessment worksheet (linked in "References" at the bottom of page)

 

 

Procedures:

1.     Say: For us to become great readers, we need to learn an easy way for how to say words. We know how to read the short vowel words with the short a in them like cat and cap. Today, we will learn about long A. Now we have to remember that there is a silent e signal that is used to make A say its name, /A/. Have you ever seen The Princess Diaries? When you say the sound /A/, I want you to think of the Queen from The Princess Diaries saying, “A Queen is never late, everyone else is simply early.” [Show graphic image from The Princess Diaries]. Let’s look at the way that we spell /A/. There are a couple of ways to spell /A/, but the way that we are going to learn about is with the letter a and signal e at the end, which tells us to say A’s name. [Write a_e on the poster board]. The blank space in between a and e means that there is a consonant in between the two vowels. Do you remember what a consonant is? The silent e signal at the end makes /A/ say the “A” sound. 

 

2.     Say: Before we learn about spelling /A/ words, we need to listen for it in some words. Let’s listen for the /A/ sound in some words together! When I listen for the /A/ sound, I hear a say its name like in cake or tape. When you hear the /A/ sound, you move your mouth by opening and closing it, like you are catching a baseball in a baseball mitt. Let’s practice recognizing the sound /A/ by saying “Abe the ape can’t be late for his date!” Let’s practice stretching out the /A/ sound as we say this. Open the baseball glove really wide and close it shut to catch the baseball as you say the letter /A/! “Aaaaabe the aaaaaape can’t be laaaaate for his daaaate!”. Now let’s practice saying and listening for the /A/ sound in other words. If you hear /A/ in a word, catch a baseball in your baseball mitt. If you don’t hear /A/, keep your baseball mitt closed. [Practice this with students by saying words: grade, tap, ball, brown, grapes, cop, scrape, cake, base, tug”.] 

 

3.     [Pull out letterboxes and letter manipulatives.] Say: Let’s say our tongue tickler again! “Abe the ape can’t be late for his date!”. What if we want to spell the word ape? An ape is a large monkey, we can see them in the zoo. [Pull out letterbox with two letterboxes]. As we’ve learned, to make the /A/ sound, we need a and a silent e at the end with a consonant in between. So, we’ll put an “a” in the first box, and we put e outside the second box because it is silent. The consonant in the word ape is the letter p, so we put that in the middle. “/A/p/”. “AAAAA-ppppp”. Let’s practice with another word. Abe the ape can’t be late for his date! Let’s practice spelling the word late. Now, we are going to need three letterboxes. So, we will go ahead and put “a” in the second letterbox, and “e” outside the third letterbox because it is silent. The /l/ sound comes at the beginning, and the /t/ sound is the consonant that comes between the /A/ and the silent e. We’re going to say it slowly: /l//a// t//e/. 

 

4.     Say: Now I’m going to have you spell some words in letterboxes. I have a list of words that have the /A/ sound, and I am going to read them to you and then you must spell them in the letterboxes. We are going to start out with an easy word, ate. “I ate a pie yesterday”. Spell ate in the boxes! Don’t forget about what the silent e does. It makes the / A/ sound and it goes outside the second box! [Observe, progress, and affirm]. Great! How about we try another word! I want for you to spell the word cake. “I want to get a cake on my birthday”. [Give time to continue to spell words on list: hat, plane, tape, cake, base, blaze, scrape, tank]. 

 

5.     Say: Now let’s practice reading the words that we have spelled! [Show words ate, grade, cake, tape, base, plane, blaze, scrape and pseudoword pake on a poster board]. Have students say words from the poster board, then have the students read all the words together. [Take the poster board down]. Then, pass around notecards to each student that has one of those words written down. Have students go around the room and say the word on their card aloud for the class till every student has read his or her card. 

 

6.     Say: I am so impressed with how well you all did with our new sound. You have also done a fantastic job reading so many new words with /A/: a_e. Now, we are going to read a book called James and the Good Day. James wants to have a good day and play lots of games. The first game he plays is with his tug boat. He wants to sail his tug boat in the bath tub. He tries to make his bath tub into a big lake for the boat. Keep reading to find out what happens next! Split up into pairs and take turns reading James and the Good Day. Take turns on who reads what page. After your partner finishes reading that page, ask them a question about what happened on that page of the story. When each of you finish reading, sit still and quiet so I know that you are done! When everyone is done reading, we will read the story together again as a class! [Reread story having different children read each page and talking through each page of the story together as a class]. 

 

7.     Say: Before we finish our lesson about one of the ways we spell /A/ = a_e, let’s play a quick matching game! On this worksheet, we have words that have the long /A/ sound and words that do not. You have to fill in the sentences with the word that belongs. Make sure you circle all of the a_e= /A/ words.

 

 

References:

Worksheet:https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a7/60/08/a76008d2da1100f07db8399e8c9c030a.jpg

Gif: https://media.giphy.com/media/qH3n13KWYgM9i/giphy.gif

Cushman, Sheila, et al. James and the Good Day. Educational Insights, 1990.

Sistrunk, Lauren. Ehhh? What did you say?

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