Beatrice Smith

Rationale: This lesson teacher children about the short vowel correspondence e = /e/. In order for children to become skilled readers, they must learn to recognize the spellings that map word pronunciations. In this lesson children will learn to recognize, spell, and read words containing the spelling e = /e/ correspondence. They will learn a meaningful correspondence (putting hand to ear and saying “eh?”), 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 a person cupping hand around ear because he didn’t hear something

Coverup Critter

Whiteboard and marker for modeling

Class set of letterboxes (like Elkonin boxes)

Class set of letter tiles (preferably plastic)

Magnetic or smart board letters for teacher

Word List: 2 phonemes - [ egg ], 3 phonemes - [ tell, hen, wag, peck ], 4 phonemes - [ kept, bent, drag ], 5 phonemes - [ slept ]

Letters: e, g, g, t, l, l, h, n, w, a, p, c, k, b, d, r, s

List of spelling words on poster

Decodable text: Red Gets Fed

Assessment worksheet

Pencils

 

 

Procedures:

1. Say: Today we’re going to learn the short E sound. When I say /e/, I want you to think of a time when you couldn’t hear someone very well so you said, “Ehhh? Could tell me again?”. [ Show graphic image ] Let’s all put our hand around our ear and say “ehhh?”. 

2. Say: Before we look at the spelling of /e/, let’s listen for it in some words. When I say /e/ my mouth is open with my tongue resting at the bottom of my mouth while the sides of my mouth stretch back a little. [ Make vocal gesture for /e/ ] Then I make the sound in the back of my throat. 

3. Say: I know that sounds really hard so let’s practice saying /e/ with a tongue tickler. One time someone went to the zoo to talk to the elephants about their favorite foods. Do you know what the elephants said? Here’s our tongue tickler: Every elephant enjoys eggs. Let’s stretch the /e/ sounds. Eeeevery eeeelephant eeeenjoys eeeeggs. Now you say it. Now let’s try it again, except this time we’re going to cut off the /e/ in the words. /e/ very /e/ lephant /e/ njoys /e/ ggs. 

4. Say: To practice more, I will say some words and you have to tell me if it has /e/ in it. I’ll show you /e/ in a word first: bed. Hmm, let me say it slowly, /b/ /e/ /d/. I felt my mouth open as my tongue went rested down. There is an /e/ in bed! But what about sit? Let’s say it slowly, /s/ /i/ /t/. Hmm, my mouth didn’t open wide enough. /e/ is not in sit. Now you all try it. If you hear /e/ in a word put your hand to your ear, but if you don’t hear /e/ then shake your head. Are you ready? Is /e/ in bell, dog, pet, red, man, ten, hug? 

5. Say: Now let’s look at the spelling of /e/. We spell /e/ with e [ Write e on the board ]. What if we wanted to learn how to spell the word fresh? “I like the smell of fresh laundry.” Fresh means clean or new in this sentence. To spell fresh in letterboxes we need to know how many phonemes are in the word. We should stretch out the word, /f/ /r/ /e/ /sh/. That sounds like four phonemes so we need four letterboxes. I heard /e/ right after the /r/ and before the /sh/. So I am going to put the e in the third box. The word begins with /f/ and then /r/ so I will put f in the first box and r in the second box. Right now we have /f/ /r/ /e/ and after that we hear /sh/. I know that there isn’t one letter that makes the /sh/ sound, I need two letters. I need s and h and I will put them in my last box. Which means we have f r e sh [ stretching each letter out as you point to each one ] as our spelling.

6. Say: Now, we are going to spell out some words in letterboxes. You are going to start with two letterboxes. Our first word is egg, just like “every elephant enjoys eggs”. What goes in the first box? [ Respond to children’s answers ]. What goes in the second box? Remember, that at the end of short-vowel words, sometimes you need two consonants. I’m going to walk around the room and check for everyone’s spelling [ Walk around and observe ]. For our next two words you will need three letterboxes. Remember to listen for the beginning sound that goes in the first box and then listen for /e/. Our second word is tell, “I want to tell you a secret”. [ Wait for students to spell the word ]. Let’s check our work. Look closely at how I spell tell using my letterboxes: t - e - l - l. Did you spell it the same way? Did you remember to use two ls at the end of a short-vowel word? That’s wonderful, time to move on to our third word, hen, “A girl chicken is called a hen”. [ Have a volunteer spell it in the letterboxes on the front board for children to check their work. Repeat this step for each new word ]. Next word. Listen to see if the word has /e/ in it before you spell it. The next word is wag like “The puppy wags his tail”. Do you need e to spell it? Right, you need crying baby a instead! [ Volunteer spells it on the front board ]. Let’s do one more three box word, peck “The chickens peck at their food”. Remember that at the end of short-vowel words /k/ is spelled with a ck. [ Volunteer spells it on the front board ]. Continue this with remaining 4 and 5 phoneme /e/ words and review words: kept, bent, drag, slept.

7. Say: Now, I am going to let you read all of the words that you just spelled. Before we do that though, I am going to show you how to read a tough word [ show poster with word trend on it ]. First, I see that the letter e is in the middle of the word so that tells me it makes the /e/ sound. Now I am going to add my beginning letters t and r. Now I have t-r-e so /tre/. Then we add our last two letters, n and d. Now we put it all together: t-r-e-n-d making /trend/. Oh it’s trend like this style is in trend in now. Now you try it on your own. [Show students on the whiteboard the words: egg, tell, hen, wag, peck, kept, bent, drag, slept; pseudo words: jat, mext, pleft. Then have students repeat the words in unison. Afterwords, let every student read one on their own].  

8. Say: Everyone has done an amazing job at learning our new sound /e/! Now we are going to read a book called Red Gets Fed. This is about a puppy named Red. He really likes to eat. He wants to eat more breakfast than he should, but how do you think he’s going to do that? Let’s read and see what happens. If you come to a word you are unsure about, finish the sentence to see if you can figure it out. If not, use a coverup critter to break up the word. If you still do not know then ask your partner or me for the word [ Children pair up and take turns reading alternating pages while the teacher walks around to monitor progress. After individual paired reading, the class rereads Red Gets Fed aloud together, and stops between pages to talk about the plot ]. 

9. Say: That was such a funny story! Did you see how Red tricked everyone? He was fed twice! I bet he feels really full now. Before we finish our lesson on e = /e/, we are going to do a worksheet. On this worksheet there are pictures on on one side and a list of short e words the other side. You need to read the short e words and draw and line to the correct picture. If you finish early then you can color the pictures if you want. [ At the end, collect all worksheet to evaluate progress ]. 

 

 

 

Resources:

Murray, Geri. Oh, I didn’t know!

https://auburn.instructure.com/courses/1192720/files?preview=147523557

 

Sistrunk, Lauren. Ehhh? What Did You Say?

https://sistrunklauren.wixsite.com/mysite/beginning-reading

 

Book: Cushman, Shelia. Red Gets Fed. Carson, CA: Educational Insights, 1990. Print.

 

Assessment Worksheet: https://www.enchantedlearning.com/alphabet/matchwordsandpix/shorte/

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Image: https://giphy.com/explore/i-cant-hear-you

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