Emily
the
Excellent Elephant
Beginning
Ashley Roy
Title: Emily the Excellent Elephant
Rationale:
When children are beginning to read and write,
vowels are
very important concepts that need to be covered. Short vowels,
and long vowels,
are the building blocks of our language. By being phonemically
aware,
students will be able to recognize vowels and their sounds with ease
and be
able to successfully blend whole words together. This lesson will
guide
students to understand the correspondence of e = /e/ and help students
in
reading and writing with this correspondence.
Materials:
1. Copy of Red Gets Fed
2. Large-print typed copy of the tongue twister "Emily the excellent
elephant excites the crowd with her energy"
3.
Phoneme graphic of a creaky door (door that looks old)
4. List of words for students to compare sounds (Fred/Press, fed/meat,
green/bed, pen/marker)
5. Whiteboard
6. Whiteboard markers
7. Letterboxes for each student
8. Letter manipulatives for each student (l,e,d,n,b,l,l,s,t,m,p)
9. List of words for letterbox lesson
(led,end,bed,bell,set,smell,sled,best,send,spent)
10. Paper and pen for running records
Procedures:
1. I will begin the lesson by explaining that without language,
it would
be very difficult for us to communicate our wants and needs and ideas
to one
another. I will then explain that the grapheme we will be
covering is e =
/e/. Next, I'll model
the word for the students. "The sound 'eeeh' can be found
in
words like Fred and press. Can you say Fred?
"Now
can you say press? Great job!!"
2. Next I will explain that the short e sound is like an old
creaky door "eeeeh".
I will show the class the phoneme graphic of the old door. "Okay,
now I want everybody to make the old creaky door sound with me,
ready?"
[everyone] "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhh?" "Great job!"
3. We will then go over our poster with the tongue twister on
it. "Okay,
I want everybody to listen carefully to the tongue twister because not
all of
the eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh sounds come at the beginning. "Emily the
excellent elephant excites the crowd with her enegy" Eeeemily
theee
eeexceeeeleeent eeeeleeephant eeexcites theeee crowd with her
eeeenergy" "Eeeeeeeeeexcelleeeeeeeeent!
Now let's all do it together again!" The whole class will then
say
the tongue twister together, extending the eeeeeh sounds when they come
to
them.
4. I will then ask students to compare sets of words with each
other. "Now we're going to look at word pairs. I'm going to
read two words out and you'll tell me whether you hear eeeeeh in one
word or
the other. Are you ready? Do you hear eeeh in fed or
meat? Do
you hear eeeh in green or bed? Do you hear eeeh in pen or
marker?
Good job! You did eeeeeeeexcellent!"
5.
Next we will do a letterbox lesson to spell words. I will hand
each
student a set of boxes to use for the lesson. I will then
explain, "For
the letterbox lesson, I am going to read out a word, and I want you to
spell it
in your boxes. Now, don't forget that each little box represents
ONE
sound in the word. For example [I will turn and draw three boxes
on the
board to portray my letterboxes] if I were to spell the word peck, I
will
listen for the sound‰¥Ïeeeeeh and place it in its letterbox.
So I will
put an e
in the box. Then I will focus on the consonants and place the p in its
letterbox. Finally, I'll go to the last sound of the word
k-k-k.
But I know that it is ck because it is a digraph that follows a short
vowel and
since c-k makes one sound, both of those letters will go in the last
box. This
means I will have 3 letterboxes for the word peck.
6. After I demonstrate the letterbox lesson, I will begin to
administer
the lesson to the class by reading off the following words as they
spell
them: 3: [led, end, bed, bell, set, bad, dad]; 4: [smell, sled,
best,
send, small]; 5: [spent].
7. After we finish the spelling portion of the lesson, I will
write the
words on the white board and have the students read them to me one by
one. The
students will make sure and identify the eeeeh in each word. This will
show me
if they understand the eeeeh sound in spoken and written words.
8. "Everyone has done a fabulous job with our lesson today! Now I
am
going to write some pretend words on the board for everyone to read.
These
words are not real but they can still be read." I will then write
the following pseudo words on the board : leb,
sem, nep, pem. This will be my assessment.
9. "Great job with the letterbox lesson! We're going to
read
the book Red Gets Fed. This book is about a dog named Red
who is
really hungry in the morning and needs to find somebody to feed
him. Do
you think Red gets fed? Do any of you have a dog at home? Well,
let us
read our story to find out!"
Assessment:
I will assess the students' reading of Red Gets Fed by
taking a
running record while they read if time permits. The students will have
already
read the book Red Gets Fed earlier
this week since we only take running records on books students have
already
read with no scaffolding. If time does not permit write new pseudowords
on the
white board that focus on e = /e/ and get students to call them out.
References
Cushman, Sheila. Red Gets Fed.
Murray, Bruce. The
Stevens,
White, Amy. E-E-E-E-Extra E-E-E-E-Effort. http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/odysseys/whitebr.html
Turner,
Christy. Ella the Elephant
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/voyages/turnerbr.html