Beginning Reading
Kimberly Barton
Rationale: In order to become
better
readers and decoders, children need to understand that letters
represent vocal gestures
or phonemes. Before children can match letters to phonemes, they need
to be
able to recognize phonemes in spoken words. Short vowels are
probably the
toughest phonemes to identify. This lesson plan will help students to
identify
the correspondence e=/e/ by recognizing the sound of an elderly person
‘eh?’
throughout words.
Materials: pencil, chart with
the tongue
twister “Edward exercises when he gets out of bed.” Primary paper, list
of
pseudowords, Smart Board/ whiteboard/chalkboard, overhead projector,
letterboxes and letters for letterboxes, a
copy of
the Rookie
Reader book Pen Pals for each student, picture of Grandpa
Edward with
the letter e
Procedure:
1)
I
will introduce the lesson by writing the letter e on the board (this
will also
model for the students to see how to write the letter e). “Who knows
what
letter this is? Great job, it is the letter e! We know that e can make
a few
sounds when we read it in a word, but today we are going to focus on
when the
letter e makes the sound “eh.” Just like when your grandpa or someone
elderly
cannot hear what you are saying and they say “Ehh? What is that you are
saying
sonny?” (cup my ear with my hand to show the hand gesture). Here today
with us,
is Grandpa Edward. He is going to help us learn this sound.” I will put
up the
picture of Grandpa Edward with the letter e.
2)
“Now I am going to
read this
tongue twister and then I want all of you to read it with me.” I will
read
“Edward exercises when he gets out of bed” first and model as I point
to each
word that I read. “Now your turn.” We will all read together. “Very
good
friends!”
3)
“Let’s read it
again, and every
time we hear Grandpa Edward’s “Eh?” (/e/) sound, let’s stretch it out
and cup
our ears, just like he does. I will read it first and then we will read
it all
together.” I read, pointing to each word and holding the pointer on e
while I
stretch out the sound and cup my ear. “Now your turn.” We will all read
“Eeeeeeedward eeeeexerciseeeees wheeeen he geeeets out of beeeed.”
“Wonderful
job!”
4)
“Now we are going to
play a game
to see if all of you can pick out the /e/ sound in words that I say. I
am going
to hold up two cards with a picture and you have to tell me which word
has the
/e/ sound in it.” I will hold up the pictures of the words fed and sad.
“Who
can tell me which picture has Grandpa Edward’s “Eh?” sound in it?
Right, it’s
fed! Great job!” I will repeat the game with the word pairs of
slept/hat,
bed/door, dress/dig, mess/ball, chest/girl, and red/green.
5)
I will give each
student a set of
letterboxes and lower case letters for a letterbox lesson. Each student
will
have only the letters needed for the words we will use. “Now we are
going to
use our letterboxes to spell some words. Remember that each box stands
for one
mouth movement only. It is not just the letter, but the whole sound.
Watch me
as I spell out the word beg. I hear /b/ so I know there is a b,
then I
hear Grandpa Ed talking to us /e/ so I know e goes next, and last I
hear /t/ so
I know t goes at the end. Now it’s your turn!” I will call out each
word and
then after everyone completes the word, I will have one student come
show the
whole class how he/she did it on the overhead projector. After we go
through
every word, I will spell the words out myself without the letterboxes
and have the
students read the word back to me as a class.
6)
We will read the
book Pen Pals
and I will introduce with a book talk. Book talk: Ben is a baby boy
that is in
his bed one day. He starts yelling for his pet named Ted. Ben is
stuck in
his crib and Ted, his pet, cannot get in. They both are very
upset so Ben
cries for his dad. Do you want to see if the dad can get Ted in the
bed? I
wonder how he is going to do that! Let’s read to find out!
7)
I will assess the
students by
having them read a list of pseudowords to me individually. This is to
make sure
they have not just memorized the spelling or only use parts of the
spelling to
guess the word. The list is composed of the words: geg, dest, mag,
slem,
peds, lev, fesp, zed, and fap (I included review words in the list).
References:
Boggs,
Adrienne.
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/begin/boggsbr.html. "E's are E-E-E-Excellent Design
for
Beginning Reading."
Pen Pals. Carson.
Educational Insights.
Kimberly Barton- bartokc@auburn.edu
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