Rationale:
While children are learning all of the phonemes and about print concepts, they can learn how to blend.  This should help them recognize words they would not normally know.  The Reading Genie website states: blending means smoothly joining phonemes to come up with a pronunciation close enough to a word to access the word.  I will be modeling the correspondence ee=/E/.

Materials:
Assessment for the students; a list of words for them to practice their blending skills.  Chart with tongue twister on it: "Lee saw a bee fly from the tree and land on his feet."  Lee and the Team book.
Review: i=/i/.  Let's review a little bit.  Do you remember what sound /i/ makes?  I'm going to write a word on the board and you tell me what it is.  Good job!  Sit is the right answer.

Talk about the correspondence that is being taught that day.  Today class we are going to talk about the sound ee=/E/ (write it on the board so they can see it).  This sound makes the long /E/ sound like in meet.  Can you all say meet?  Good job!  Let's try this tongue twister to help us remember the long /E/ sound.  I will say it first so that you can see how my mouth moves when I say /E/.  Now watch me.  Lee saw a bee fly from the tree and land on his feet.  Now this time I want you to repeat the tongue twister I just said.  In what words do you hear the sound /E/?  Good, Lee, bee, tree, and feet all have the /E/ sound in them.
Guided practice:  Play the blending game.  I have a secret code, and I want to see is you can break it.  First let me give you an example.  I am thinking of an insect that stings.  It's a /b/ /ee/.  Let's say that word again but blend the two sounds together.  BBB-eeee.  Good job!  Now it is your turn to guess the word.  I am thinking of a word to describe a mountain.  It's /s/ /t/ /ee/ /p/.  What is the word?  Steep is the right answer.  Let's say that again and blend all of the sounds.
Reading whole text: I will hold up the book Lee and the Team, and I will read this book.  We will stop at the end of every page and talk about all of the words that had the sound /E/ in them. Okay now I am holding up this book titled Lee and the Team.  I am going to read the book and after I have read the whole book, We will go through and pick out all of the words that have the long /E/ sound in it.   Everyone will continue to read the whole book while stopping after every page to talk about the words that had the long /E/ sound in them.
Assessment: For the assessment, I will take each individual student and give him or her a list of words.  The student will say each word and do two things: (1) first blend the word and then read the word and (2) tell me if it has the long /E/ sound in it.  While the other students are waiting to be assessed, they will have a practice sheet with some words (not the same as the asessment) on it and be practicing their blending skills until his or her name is called.  The students have a choice of doing it by themselves or with a
partner.

Reference: The Reading Genie website.
http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/blending.html

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