The Old, Creaky Door

Rationale: It is imperative that children learn to identify letters and the phonemes they represent. This lesson will teach students to recognize the letter Ee in print and the phoneme /e/ in spoken words. This will be achieved by having students learn a meaningful representation, gesture, and letter symbol. They will also listen for the phoneme in spoken words.

Materials:

primary paper
pencil
crayons
poster with the letter Ee and a picture of an old door
sentence strip with the tongue twister “Earnest the elephant enjoys eggs in the early morning.”
two cards per student, one each red and blue
Red Gets Fed (Educational Insights)

Procedure:

Display the picture for the class and ask, “Can anyone tell me what this is a picture of? That’s right, this is an old door. What sounds might an old door make? When I think of an old door, I think of the /e/ sound. Everyone make this sound with me as you open your creaky door. Ready?” Have everyone make their creaky door sounds and perform the motion of opening the door.

Display sentence strip. “Let’s try out a tongue twister with our /e/ sound. Repeat after me. Earnest the elephant enjoys eggs in the early morning. [practice a few times] Now I want you to stretch out the /e/ sound whenever you hear it in our tongue twister. Ready? Eeeearnest the eeeelephant eeeenjoys eeeeggs in the eeeearly morning. You guys are great at this! Let’s try it one more time!” Repeat once more.

Hand out the red and blue cards to each student. “Now I want you to listen for the /e/ sound in some other words. If you hear the /e/ sound, hold up your red card. If you don’t hear the /e/ sound, hold up your blue card. Lets give it a try.” (Use the following words: red, blue, bed, chair, hand, leg, feel, felt, etc.) Take note of any students who raise the wrong card.

“The /e/ sound is represented by the letter Ee (show letter Ee poster). I want you to take out your paper and pencil and write some letter Ee’s for me. Let’s begin with the capital E. Watch how I make the letter. First, you slide your pencil across the rooftop, then down to the sidewalk and across again. Then make a line across the fence. Now you give it a try on your own. I’m going to walk around and see how you’re doing. When I put a sticker on your paper, that means I want you to make ten more letter Es just like that one. Raise your hand if you need help or have questions.

“Now lets try to write the lowercase letter e. Watch me show you how. Begin with your pencil halfway between the fence and the sidewalk. Swoop up, touch the fence, then down, touch the sidewalk, and back up just a little above the sidewalk.” Repeat the assessment used in number three.

“We are going to read a book called Red Gets Fed. Red is a very hungry dog. He’s also kind of sneaky. Red goes around waking up Meg and everyone else in the family to try and get some breakfast. We’re going to read the book to find out if Red gets fed.” After reading, have a brief discussion about the book with the students.

Have the students write a message about the book Red Gets Fed.

Assess students based on their ability to identify the /e/ sound in words, as well as their ability to write upper and lower case letter Ees.

References:

Meredith Moseley, The Scary, Creaky Door. http://www.auburn.edu/%7Emurraba/invent/mosleyel.html

Dr. Bruce Murray, The Reading Genie. http://auburn.edu/~murraba/