E-e-e-Extra-Ordinary
Beginning Reading
By: Jessi Haffarnan
Rationale:
For children to gain the ability to write, they must first understand an important component of language, phoneme awareness. Phoneme awareness is the recognition of vocal gestures when speaking. Teaching children to recognize short vowel phonemes in words can aid them the most in the beginning and provides an important scaffold needed for them to gain confidence. This lesson will provide children a correspondence they will need to build on, the correspondence of e=/e/ in text and writing.
Materials:
Phoneme Graphic of rocking chair, chart with tongue twister written on
it (Everybody saw Eddie and the Eskimo enter the elevator on the
elephant.), primary paper, pencils, a copy of Red Gets Fed for
student, flash cards with letterbox words written on them (beg, smell,
egg, vent, let) , Elkonin boxes for student, letter manipulative for
student (b, e, g, l, m, n, t, v), coloring sheet with eggs, elephant,
elevator, Eskimo, equestrian.
Procedure:
1. Begin lesson with explaining the graphic provided.
Explain, "/e/ is like a rocking chair, it squeaks when it rocks back
and forth making an eehhh, sound." Demonstrate the gesture of
rocking in the rocking chair and the /e/ sound.
2. Using the chart, lead students through the
tongue twister stretching out the /e/ sound saying, "Let's see if we
can make that /e/ sound together follow me Eeeeverybody saw Eeeeddie
and the Eeeskimo eeenter the eeeelevator on the eeelephant (rocking
every time you come to an /e/) That was Eeexcellent guys!"
3. After practicing the tongue twister a few times
test the students ability by asking students to identify the creaky
rocking chair sound in words given a choice between two. "In
which word do you hear the creaky rocking chair /e/ sound in? bed
or sad? Egg or bat? Blend or bad? (ask individually.)"
Then allow children some freedom with their new found
correspondence by letting them tell you which words they can think of
that have the /e/ correspondence in them.
4. Begin the Letter box lesson here. Now
that you are sure that the child has the correspondence needed to
progress on, use the Elkonin boxes to complete a letter box lesson,
have the children spell out the words beg, smell, egg, vent, and
let. This will reinforce the idea of the creaky rocking chair /e/
sound correspondence. If the child incorrectly spells the word,
pronounce it the way it was spelled and provide time for a
self-correction, allow child to try 3 times and then model how to
complete the spelling, "vent, that is a difficult word, lets stretch
that one out. Vvvveeeeennnnnttttt, vent, hmm I heard that creaky
rocking chair somewhere in there. Lets map it out using our
letter boxes! We heard that creaky rocking chair, that sound
comes second in the word. I wonder what could come first,
vvvvvvent. That has the same sound as video and vanilla."
Continue through with this process till the word is completed and
then say the word that you have spelled.
5. Continue through all the words.
6. Next introduce the decodable book: Red Gets
Fed. "Guess what. Today we are going to read a book
about a dog that really like to eat, Red. Red likes to eat so
much that he asks everyone in his family for food. I wonder if he
can eat all the food that he begs for. Lets read and find out."
7. Pose a message topic for the child to write on
such as "What is your favorite food?"
Assessment:
For assesment, I would provide a coloring sheet that has children color
in the items that contain the creaky rocking chair /e/ sound, such as
elephant, egg, and eskimo.
Resources:
Murray, B.A., and Lesniak, T. (1999) The Letterbox Lesson: A hands on
approach for teaching decoding. The Reading Teacher, 52, 644-650.
Red Gets Fed, Carson, Educational Insights.
Wallach and Wallach-http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/twisters.html-10/12/06
Boggs, Adrienne. http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/begin/boggsbr.html. "E's are E-E-E-Excellent
Design for Beginning Reading."