Eh… What Did You
Say?
Emergent
Literacy Design
Rationale:
To become readers children must
understand the concept of our
alphabet. An understanding of the alphabet entails knowledge that
letters are
representations of phonemes and the spelling of a word maps out the
phonemes
from oral language. Before children can understand the correlation
between
phonemes in spoken works and their corresponding letters or mappings
the
student must first be able to recognize phonemes in their oral
contexts. Short
vowels, which do not carry the letter names, are some of the most
difficult
phonemes for students to identify. My lesson will address the short
vowel e.
The students will be able to identify /e/ in spoken words. A
correlating letter
symbol and several meaningful representations, and practice finding the
/e/ in
its spoken environment will facilitate this knowledge.
Materials:
1.
Introduce the
lesson by explaining that our
written language is a secret code and in order to crack the code we
need to
learn what letter stands for the mouth moves we make when we speak.
Today we
are going to look for the mouth move /e/. /e/ is found in many words
but
sometimes it's difficult to find. As we practice we will become experts
at
spotting /e/ in a lot of different words.
2.
Ask the students:
Have you ever heard anyone go
/e/ (make the "What did you say?" motion by cupping your hand around
your ear) due to the fact that they could not hear something? We are
looking
for this particular mouth move in the words we will look at today.
Let's
practice! Turn toward you neighbor and act like you can't hear them and
go /e/.
Now let's try spotting /e/ in a word. We'll use the word red.
You have
to stretch the word out as you say it. Re-e-e-e-ed. Try it with me:
re-e-e-ed.
Did you hear the /e/ in the middle of the word?
3.
Let's try a tongue
twister: From the chart read
"Ed the elephant saw Eddie the Eskimo enter the elevator." Everybody
say it three times together. Let's say it again, but this time stretch
the /e/
at the beginning of the word. Eeeed the eeelephant saw Eeeeddie the
eeeeskimo
eeeenter the eeeelevator. This time try to break it off the word. /e/ d
the /e/
lephant saw /e/ ddie the /e/ skimo /e/ nter the /e/ levator.
4.
Have students take
out their primary paper and a
pencil. Tell them that we can use the letter e to spell the
mouth move
/e/. The letter e is close to the letter c. To write an
e
we will draw a line in the knee area then just like c we will
ride the
broken roller coaster around the loop. Model this for the class. Have
everyone
practice writing an e on their paper. Tell them that you want to see
all their
wonderful e's. Tell them you want them to make nine more just
like it.
Be sure to remind the students that when they see the letter e
all by
itself in a word that is their signal to say /e/.
5.
Spotting the mouth
move: Call on students to
choose the word where they hear /e/ and ask them to explain how they
knew which
word to choose. Do you hear /e/ Leg or arm? Tell
or ask?
Jed or Bill? Too or get? Now let's see if you can spot the mouth
move in
our Elephant Ed sentences. If you hear /e/ in a word make the "What did
you say?" motion. Read the entire sentence then give words one by one.
Elephant Ed says: Nell is swell because she can spell. Elephant
Ed says:
Jed’s head is red, so he went to bed.
6.
Read Peg the
Hen and discuss the story.
Re-read it again slowly and have students do the "What did you say?"
motion when they hear words with the /e/ sound. List the words on the
board.
When finished reading review them. Give each student a large sheet of
paper and
have him or her illustrate his or her favorite, funniest part of the
story and
write about it using invented spelling. You can have the students share
their
work with the entire class by displaying it on the wall.
Give the children
a page with pictures and identify each picture.
Ask the students to write the letter e below the pictures whose name
contain
/e/.
Ehhh? I Can’t Hear You. Emergent Literacy Design. Carrie Sluder. Summer 2004. http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/begin/sluderel.html
The Reading Genie http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/
Click
here to return to Explorations.