Balloon Blending
Beginning
Blending
Rationale:
Students need to have knowledge of letter-sound relationships coupled with blending abilities in order to read words automatically. Students will be able to decide more quickly with some active and engaging blending experience practice. This lesson will use the Body-Coda method to blend because it is the easiest way to blend.
Materials:
-piece of poster board with a picture of a clown on it.
-3 pieces of yarn that will serve as “strings” to
the
balloons. (They should extend from the clowns hands into the air.)
-yellow balloons with the letters “a
(8), c (2), f, j, m, r (2), s” written on them and green
balloons with the
letters b, d, g, n, m, p, r, t written
on them.
-smaller versions
of the same balloons for each student.
-sticky-tac that will enable you to temporarily
paste
balloons with letters in the air beside the clown.
-a book like Educational Insights, A Cat
Nap.
Procedures:
1.
“Today
we are going to learn how to blend. Blending is a lot like rhyming.
When you
blend you have to make each sound run together smoothly. Blending is a
fun
thing to do and it is also very important. We need to learn how to
blend
letters in order to read.”
2. “Does anyone remember the sound that a short a makes? That’s right! It says /a/, the crying baby sound. Today we will use the /a/ sound to blend our letters together. Listen as I blend these letters together, /ma/ /n/, maaann. Did you hear the word that I made from those three sounds? Very good, I said man. Today we are going to learn a special way to help us remember how to blend words.”
3.
Show
the children the poster of the clown.
You will now explain how to blend balloons. “Can everyone
tell me
what this is? Right! It’s
a clown.
Well, this clown is very sad. He
is sad because he would like some balloons.
However, he can’t just have any old balloons. He wants his
balloons to
form a word! Guess what!
We can help him!
4. “I have given
you each a set
of balloons. The balloons have letters
written on them. These letters make
sounds. Our job is to blend the balloons
so that we can give the clown some balloons that form a word! For example, in my hand I have two balloons
with the letters b and a on them. These balloons make the sound
“bbbaaaa” Who can tell me another
balloon that I can
add to these to make a word? How about
t? By blending these
sounds together we can make a new sound. This sound is a
word! Listen as I blend them together---/b//a//t/---bbbaaaaattttt. What
word
did we make? Right, bat.”
5.
“Always
remember that different sets of
balloons will make many different sounds.” Continue to model this
with
different letters until each child understands what to do.
6.
“Now
I want you all to go back to your desks and practice blending balloons.
I will
give each of you a set of balloons. Remember that it takes two yellow
balloons
and one green balloon to make a word.” The green
balloons should have letters b, d,
g, n, m, p, r, t on them
and the yellow balloons should have the letters a (8), c (2), f, j, m, r (2), s
on them. The students should have eight blending balloons when
they are
finished. “I want to see how many blending balloons you can make.” Walk around and make sure that the students
are blending each word accurately. Make notes for assessment.
7. “Now I am going to give each of you a copy of A Cat Nap and I’m going to walk around and listen to each of you read part of the story”. Make miscue notes while listening. “Everyone needs to start reading the story and if I don’t get to you before you finish reading, just close your book, and practice more blending. I will get to you as soon as I can and when I do I will let you read part of the story to me.”
8.
To
make sure that the students completely understand how to blend, go over
the
procedure again during the day and week. For more practice, do another
lesson
like this but use a different vowel.
References:
http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/blending.html
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