Uncle’s Umbrella
Beginning to Read
Rationale:
This
lesson will help beginning readers to learn to spell and read words.
They will
learn to recognize the correspondence u=/u/ in written and spoken
words. They
will learn a meaningful representation and practice spelling and
reading words
with u=/u/ using a letterbox lesson and read a new book.
Materials:
paper
and pencils for every child
Text:
Fuzz and the Buzz for each student
3x5
cards with printed vowels (a, e, i, o, u)
Picture
of a person with their finger on their chin & a puzzled look on
their face http://www.megabytingit.com/blog/pictures/puzzled.jpg
Silly Sentence: Uncle was
upset because he was unable to put his umbrella up.
Letterbox
squares for all the students
Letters for each child: d, u,
c,
k, t, g, p, b, m, a, s, h, l, f, f, r, o, e, n, u
Letter
u worksheet with matching pictures. http://www.etap.org/demo/langart1/lak3l1_3w5.pdf
Procedure:
1 I
will write the letter u on the board and say “This is the
letter u, it says /uh/. Have you ever been unsure of an
answer to a question and said, /uh/? Of course, we all have and that
means you
were making the sound that u
makes. Here is a picture of the person with their finger on their chin
saying
/uh/ so this will help you remember that sound. Can everyone make the
/u/ sound
with me?” (help where needed!)
2 Next, I will
teach them a silly sentence to help them
practice saying the /uh/ sound. “Can
everyone repeat this tongue twister after me? Uncle was upset because he was
unable to put
his umbrella up. Good Job!” Now I will show
them how to use their fingers to pretend drawing the letter u
in the
air. I will model for them how to take their finger and swoosh (dip) it
down
from the fence to the sidewalk and then right back up to the fence and
completing it by drawing a straight line down. “This
time when we say our silly sentence I want everyone to use their magic
fingers
and draw the letter u in the
air when you say /uh/ in the silly sentence. Uncle was upset because he was unable to put his umbrella up.
Good job class!” This exercise
will help them learn how to write the letter u along with practicing
what
letter u says.
3 “Now
that we all know what sound u
makes, and shape the imaginary /u/ made that we drew in the air, let’s
see who
knows what u really looks like!”
I will hold up cards with the individual short vowels to see if the
students
can now recognize the letter on their own.
4 I
will now let the children practice writing the letter u since
we have
practiced the phoneme. “Remember the
imaginary /u/ that we wrote in the air? Now we are going to practice
writing
that letter on our paper!” I will
pass out primary paper and model how to write the lowercase u on
the
board. “First we will start at
the fence and curve down to the sidewalk; we
will curve back up to the fence and then straight down to the sidewalk
again”.
I will ask them to write the letter u ten times. When we are
finished,
they will all say /uh/ my hand hurts now!
5 Letterbox
lesson time! “Do you know how your mouth
and lips move when saying different words? When we say /uh/ our mouth
is barely
open and our tongue is lowered inside our mouth.”
When we say the
word “truck” our mouth has four movements
(one for each phoneme). For this word we will have 4 letterboxes.
I will
give an example on the board to show the students how to put each
letter into
its own box. “Now, let’s see if everyone
can put the letters t-r-U-ck into each
box to make the word tug. Great job
class!” When needed I will help the children with other words and
make sure
that they understand that each phoneme is in its own box. To practice
we will
have more words to spell. (3—duck,
tug, puck, bug, mash 4—club, scum, bump, frog 5— scrub, crust, spend)
6 “Now it’s time to
read the story, Fuzz and Buzz. This book will
help us identify the phoneme /uh/
when reading words such as cub, hugs, runs, and hums. Listen to the
words in
the title of the story, F-uuuuuu- z-z and B-uuuuuu-z-z. Raise your hand
if you
heard the letter /u/. Me too! Now let’s all read the story out loud and
I want
everyone to raise their drawing finger when you hear the /uh/ sound
while we
read.”
7 To
assess the children’s learning of the letter u and its phoneme,
students will
complete an activity sheet with pictures. The pictures will be of some
objects
that have the letter u such as sun, nut, and rug. The students will
complete
the sheet individually and by writing the letter u in the words and
then
drawing a line to the corresponding picture. This
will help me better understand which
children know the letter u and its correspondence, and which children
may need
more practice
References:
Phonics
Readers Short Vowels. Fuzz and the Buzz. Carson, CA. Educational
Insights.
Sharon
Scyphers Uh-oh Where’s Uncle Ugly?
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/encounters/scyphersbr.html
Holland Stevens Uh
Oh! An Ugly Umbrella!
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/voyages/stevensbr.html
Worksheet:
http://www.etap.org/demo/langart1/lak3l1_3w5.pdf
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