"Ca...Ca...Ca...Caterpillar Blending"

Emergent Literacy (Blending)

Brittany Smith

Rationale

The goal of this lesson is to improve students' blending skills.  Blending is important in emergent literacy because students need to know how to produce many individual short utterances and mouth moves (phonemes) into one long utterance (words).  Students will create their own blending caterpillar.

Materials

(Advance preparation) Draw a picture of a caterpillar with three circular body parts. (Be sure to give the caterpillar features).  Photo copy the picture (one for each student).  Next, create an alphabet table (Microsoft word is good for this) with all 26 lower case letters, make a copy one for each student.  Laminate tables and caterpillars and cut out the alphabet squares.  Each body part of the caterpillar and each letter back should have a Velcro dot. 

Procedures

• (1)Today, guys, we will be learning about blending.  Blending is very important in reading.  So what is blending?  Blending is taking each sound of the word and putting them all together to say the word without pausing or stopping.  We will have to create a caterpillar so that we can blend and make a smooth word.
• (2)Okay, let's talk about the sounds that the short vowels make a=/a/, e=/e/, i=/i/, o=/o/, u=/u/.  All right now lets talk about the consonant sounds (I would then review each consonant sound with the students).
• (3)Show the students the word cat on the board.  Then model the blending   process with the caterpillar.  Okay, I know that c=/c/, so /c/ and a=/a/ so /a/.  I need to put them together.  Place the c on the head of the caterpillar and the a on the body.  Begin sounding out and blending aloud so that the children hear your thought process.  /c/ /a/ so.../ca...ca...cat/.  I know that t=/t/.  So if t=/t/ and ca=/ca/.  It must be cat! Cat ...oh like my pet cat.
• (4)Students should partner up for the independent practice of blending.  While the students are taking turns in their groups, the teacher should be walking around the room watching for students who need one-on-one.  Now it is your turn.  I want you to practice blending the word fan by completing the caterpillar(spelling the word fan on the caterpillar's body).  Continue the practice as many times as you'd like with CVC words.
• (5)Students will put their new skill to work by doing a shared reading with The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

• (6)Students will be assessed in by  blending  the  words that  we  went over in the  lesson. 

Reference

Return to Navigations Index