Icky Stinky Fingers!
Beginning Reading Lesson Design
Abby Williams
Rationale:
In order for beginning readers to become successful in reading and writing, they must first understand and recognize that each letter in the alphabet represents a different sound. By learning about phonemes and letter correspondences, beginning readers can become fluent readers. Short vowels are often difficult for students to identify and therefore, this lesson will focus on the vowel correspondence i = /i/. The students will learn the /i/ correspondence through a meaningful representation. They will also learn to spell and read words with the /i/ sound through a letterbox lesson and reading a new book with /i/ words.
Materials:
Chart with Tongue Twister, “Isabelle the Indian went insane inside the
igloo”
Primary Paper and pencils
Elkonin Boxes for each student (up to 5 boxes)
Plastic letters for each student (i, t, p, w, n, f, b, g, a, l, b, e,
d, s, c, h, r, n, k)
Oversized Letterbox and letters for modeling
Picture of ‘Icky Sticky’ (girl with glue on her hands)
Book, Liz Is Six (one for each student)
Pseudoword Test (gib, sif, rin)
Procedures:
1.) Begin the lesson
by explaining to the students that they
are going to learn about the letter i and the sound it makes. “We hear
the /i/
sound in a lot of spoken words and see the vowel i in a lot of written
words.
It’s a very iiiimportant letter to learn! Today we are going to learn
how to
spell and read words that have the /i/ sound.
2.) Ask students:
Have you ever gotten something really
sticky on your hands, like gum or glue? Show students picture of girl
with glue
on her hands. When we have this icky sticky stuff on our hands we hold
out our
hands like this and say, “iiiiiii!!!” When we make the /i/ sound our
mouth is
open and our tongue is slightly lowered. Can you all hold your hands
out like
you have something sticky on them and make the /i/ sound just like I
did? Great
job!
3.) Now let’s try a
tongue twister with the /i/ sound. “Isabelle
the Indian went insane inside the igloo”. (Exaggerate the /i/ sound in
each
word). Now let’s practice. Can everyone say that with me three times
together?
Now this time while we read the tongue twister, every time you hear the
/i/
sound, try to stretch the /i/ sound and do the hand gesture we
practiced
(Iiiiiisabelle the Iiiindian….). Great job everyone!
4.) Now let’s practice finding the
/i/ sound in some spoken words. Do you hear /i/ in pig or
dog? run or hit?
lift or drop? skin or hair? small or
big?
5.) Next do a group
letterbox lesson with /i/ words and
throw in a couple short e and short a
words for review. (tip, win, fit, big,
pal, bed, slid, chip, best, drink, split). Hand out Elkonin boxes and
instruct
students to turn their letters to the lowercase side. Be sure to listen
so that
you can hear how many boxes you will use for each word. Tell
students,
“Now I’m going to show you how to spell a word using the Elkonin boxes.
Each of
the boxes represents a separate sound in the word. For example, I want
to spell
the word fin, like a fin on a fish. There are three separate sounds in
fin:
fffff, iiiii, nnnn. If there are three sounds there will be three
boxes, one
for each sound. Now watch how I spell it using 3 boxes for the 3
different
sounds (exaggerate each sound separately and model how each sound
corresponds
to putting the specific letter(s) in each box). Now I’m going to show
you how
to read a short i word.” Model how to read the word rip
by using body-coda blending. “The letter i says /i/. That sound
is in the middle of the word. At the beginning of the word the letter r
says
/r/ and the ending letter p says /p/. Put it together…rip”.
6.) After modeling
how to spell and read the /i/ words,
begin the letterbox lesson with the students. Start with the three
phoneme
words and move up to the five phoneme words. As students are working,
walk
around the room observing their work. If a student misspells a word,
pronounce
the word as they have spelled it and see if they can correct it
themselves.
After each word is spelled by all students move on to the next.
7.) After all of the
words have been spelled by the students
with the boxes, take up the boxes. Have students read the words as I
spell the
words for them. Listen as children respond to make sure they are able
to
correctly read each word. If a student is having trouble, encourage
them to use
body-coda blending.
8.) Next hand out
short i books, Liz is Six (one per student). To grab their
attention, ask students, “Have you ever played baseball with a pig?
Well in
this story a girl named Liz has a birthday and gets a baseball mitt.
She and
her friends decide to play a game of baseball and her friend pig is up
to bat
first. Will pig get a good hit? You’ll have to read to find out!” Have
each
student read the story aloud to a partner using their quiet voices.
(Have one
partner read and then switch). Walk around and observe students as they
are
reading.
9.) Have students
write a message about their favorite
animal. Before they begin, model to students how to write a message by
providing them with an example. They can work on their message while
students
are being called up individually for assessment.
10.) Assessment:
Give each student a pseudoword test with
/i/ words Ask them to read the following ‘silly words’: gib, sif, rin,
hin, wid.
References:
Murray, B. A., &
Lesniak, T. (1999). “The letterbox lesson: A hands-on approach for
teaching decoding.” The Reading Teacher, volume 52, no. 6,
644-650.
Kohtala, Mareena. “Icky Sticky” http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/connect/kohtalabr.html
Phonics Readers
Short Vowels: Liz Is Six. (1990).
Herts. (
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