Rationale: Before matching letters to phonemes, children must first be able to recognize phonemes.  This lesson will help children identify one of the short vowels. They will identify /e/ (short e) which is one of the short vowels.  I hope by the end of the lesson that they will have learned to recognize /e/ in spoken words by learning meaningful representation and a letter symbol, and finally by practicing finding /e/ in certain words.

Materials: Primary paper and pencil; Easel with chart paper on it reading "Excellent Eddie eggs everybody except Ethel"; Pen Pal's (Educational Insights).

Procedures:
1. Our written language is a secret code and we are going to figure out some of the code today.  The tricky part about learning what letters stand for-the certain mouth moves we make as we say words.  Today we are going to work on the mouth move /e/.  The sound /e/ is in many words and we will be able to read a lot of new words that contain this letter.

2. When we say /e/ our tongue is in the middle of our mouth. Our mouth is open and our tongue does not hit the top of our mouth or the bottom; instead it rests right in the middle.
 

3. The letter /e/. Ask students: Have you ever sat in a rocking chair and heard /e/, /e/, /e/ as you rocked back and forth? Now let's pretend together that we are in a rocking chair. Say /e/ with me as we rock back and forth.

4. Let's try a tongue twister (on chart). "Excellent Eddie eggs everybody except Ethel". Let's say it together three times. Now say it again and stretch out the /e/ at the beginning of the words in our tongue twister. "Eeeexcellent Eeedie eeegs eeeverybody eeexcept Eeethel". Great job!
 

5. Tell students to take out their primary paper and pencils.  Let's write the letter e.  Take your pencil and make a small line halfway across the middle of your fence.  Then make the letter c all the way from the end of your line you made around the bottom of the sidewalk. Model this for students about five times.  Tell them to draw ten more.

6. Call on students to answer if they hear /e/ in red or blue, set or box, fed or sat, get or bad, bed or chair. Then say, "Let's see if you can notice the mouth move /e/ in some words.  Say yes if you hear /e/ and say no if you do not. Excellent, Eddie, plays, eggs, everybody, always, except, Ethel.
 

7. Read Pen Pals and talk about the story. Read it again, and have the students say /e/ when they hear /e/ throughout the book.

8. For their assessment we will play a name game.  Each child will have a piece of paper and a pencil.  The teacher will name every child in the class. The children will write yes if the child's name called out has the e=/e/ sound in it and no if it doesn't.
 

Reference: Eldredge, Lloyd J. Teaching Decoding in Holistic Classrooms. Prentice Hall, Inc. 1995. Pages 52-70

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