Haley Lushington

Rationale:

 

This lesson teaches children about the long vowel correspondence e= /e/. In order to be able to read, children must learn to recognize the spellings that map word pronunciations. In this lesson children will learn to recognize, spell, and read words containing short e. They will learn a meaningful representation (creaky door goes /e/), they will spell and read words containing this spelling in a Letterbox lesson, and read a decodable book that focuses on the correspondence e= /e/.

 

 

Materials:

 

Graphic image of confused man

cover-up critter

whiteboard or smartboard

Elkonin boxes for modeling and individual Elkonin boxes for each student

letter manipulatives for each child 

magnetic or smartboard letters for teacher: v, e, s, t, f, d, b, l, a, c, h, n, g 

list of spelling words on poster or whiteboard to read: fed, vest, belt, batch, agent, lemon

decodable text: Red gets Fed

assessment work sheet

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Procedure:

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1.  Say: In order to become expert readers we need to learn the code that tells us how to pronounce words. We have already learned to read words with the short vowel a, like tap, and today we are going to learn about short e. When I say /e/ I think of a creaky door going “eeeee”.

 

2. Say: First, we need to listen for /e/ in some words. When I listen for /e/ in words, I hear e the creaky door and my mouth gets really wide like I’m going to frown like this. [Make vocal gesture for /e/.] I’ll show you first: egg. I heard e say /e/ and I felt my lips widen out. There is a short e in egg. Now I’m going to see if it’s in bat. Hmm, I didn’t hear e say /e/ and my lips didn’t widen out. Now you try. If you hear /e/ take your hand and open the creaky door [model how to open the door]. If you don’t hear /e/ then slam it shut. Is it in get, bet, but, red, orange, yellow?.

 

3. Say: Now let’s spell some words with /e/.

The /e/ sound is spelled with the letter e. We call this sound short e because it makes a short sound instead of the long sound /E/. Let’s use the word bed. To spell bed in letterboxes, first I need to know how many phonemes I have in the word so I stretch it out and count: /b/ /e/ /d/. I need 3 boxes. I heard that /e/ just after the /b/ so I’m going to put an e in the 2nd box. The word starts with /b/, that’s easy; I need a b in the first box. The word ends with the /d/ sound so I will put a d in the last box.

 

4. Say: Now I’m going to have you spell some words in letterboxes. You’ll start out easy with three boxes for fed. “I fed the dog as soon as I got home from school.” What should go in the first box? [Respond to children’s answers]. What goes in the second box? I’ll check your spelling while I walk around the room. [Observe progress.] You’ll need four letterboxes for the next word. Listen for the beginning sound that goes in the first box. Then listen for /e/.  Here’s the word: vest, I wore a Christmas vest over my shirt. Vest. [Allow children to spell words.]  Time to check your work. Watch how I spell it in my letterboxes on the board: v –e –s–t and see if you’ve spelled it the same way. Try another with four boxes: belt; I need a belt to hold up my pants. [Have volunteer spell it in the letterbox on the front board for children to check their work. Repeat this step for each new word.] Next word. This one only has three phonemes but it’s a little tricky. Listen to see if this word has /e/ in it before you spell it: batch; I’m making another batch of cookies. Did you hear short e? Why not? Right, because we didn’t hear the creaky door. We spell it with our old friend, short vowel a.  [volunteer spells it on the front board.] Did you remember to spell /ch/ with a tch?  All three of those letters go in the last box because they all combine to give us that /ch/ sound. Now let’s try a few more with 4 phonemes: bend; the gymnast could bend backwards One more then we’re done with spelling, and this time you need five boxes: agent; The difficult mission required a secret agent.

 

5. Say: Now I am going to let you read the words you’ve spelled, but first I’ll show you how I would read a difficult word [display poster with spend.]  First I see my short e friend in the word. This means that this word has a creaky door, /e/. I’m going to use my coverup to read the first part of this word. [Uncover and blend sequentially before the vowel a then blend with the vowel.]

/s/+/p/=/sp/ Now I’m going to blend that with /e/ = /spE/. Now all I need is the end, /nd/ = /spEnd/.  Spend; that’s it. Now it’s your turn, everyone together. [Have children read words in unison. Afterwards, call on individuals to read one word on the list until everyone has had a turn.]

 

6. Say: You’ve done a great job and reading words with our new friend e=/e/. Now we are going to read a book called Red gets Fed. This book is about a dog named red. Red has an owner named Meg. Red is hungry and wants some food. Will he find Meg? Will Meg give him any food? Let’s pair up and take turns reading Red gets Fed to find out if Red gets fed. [Children pair up and take turns reading alternate pages each while teacher walks around the room monitoring progress. After individual paired reading, the class rereads Red gets Fed aloud together, and stops between page turns to discuss the plot.]

 

7. Say: That was a fun story. Did Red get Fed? Of course he did! Before we finish up with our lesson about e=/e/, I want to see how you can solve a reading problem. On this worksheet, we have some words with our short e friend that have gotten scrambled up. Use the pictures to help you unscramble the letters in these short e words. Reread your answers to see if they make sense. [Collect worksheets to evaluate individual child progress.]