Beginning Reader Lesson
Beginning Reading Lesson Design
The Bee Creeps on the Sheep
Rationale: In this lesson children will learn about the long vowel correspondence ee=/E/. In order for the children to be able to read, they much learn to recognize the spellings that map word pronunciations. In this lesson children will learn to recognize, spell, and read words containing the spelling ee. They will learn a meaningful representation (the bee creeps on sheep), they will spell and read words containing this spelling in a Letterbox Lesson and read a decodable book that focuses on the correspondence ee=/E/.
Materials:You will need a graphic image of a bee following a sheep; a cover up critter; whiteboard or Smartboard Letterbox for modeling the group and then individual Letterboxes for each student; letter manipulatives for each child and magnetic or Smartboard letters for teachers: a, b, c, d, e, f, h, l, n, p, q, r, s, t, u, w, y; list of spelling words on poster or whiteboard to read: phonemes 2-bee, day, 3- peer, feel, take, bud, beech 4-sweet, steel, bleed; a decodable text: Lee and the Team;and an assessment worksheet.
Procedures:
1. 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 short vowel words with e, such as bet, red, chess, and left. So today we are going to learn about the long E using two e’s. When I say /E/ I think of a funny image “The bee creeps on the sheep”. (Show the graphic Image)
2. Say: Before we learn about the spelling of /E/, we need to listen for it in some words. When I listen for /E/ in words, I hearesay its name /E/ and my mouth makes a shape like this. (Make vocal gesture for /E/). The sides of my mouth go out words as air is being pushed out. I’ll show you first: bee. I heard esay its name and I felt my mouth move to make the e. That means that there is a long e in bee. Now I’m going to see if it is in red. Wow, I didn’t hear e say its name and my mouth didn’t make that movement. Now you can try. If you hear /E/ say “The bee creeps on the sheep” and if you don’t hear /E/ say “No not here”. OK, so is it in peer, tell, steel, bite, queen, cat?
3. Say: Now let’s look at the spelling of /E/, that is what we will learn today. One way to spell /E/ is with the letter e twice. This tells me to say E’s name. (Write ee on the board). So, what if I want to spell the word creek? “Let’s go swimming in the creek.” Creek means a stream smaller than a river. To spell creek in my letterboxes, first I need to know how many sounds or phonemes I have in the word. I will stretch it out and count: /c/ /r/ /E/ /k/. I need 4 boxes. I heard that /E/ just before the /k/ so I’m going to put ee in the 3rd box. The word starts with /c/, so that mean I need my c. For the next sound we will need the sound /r/ which is made by the letter r. I now have one empty letterbox, let’s listen one more time to slowly to see what comes last, /c/ /r/ /E/ /k/. I think I heard a /k/. The k will go in the last letter box.
4. Say: Now I’m going to have you spell some words in letterboxes. You will start out easy with two boxes for bee. A bee is a kind of insect. “The bee stung my sister”. What should go in the first box? (respond accordingly to the child’s answer). What goes in the second box? Did we remember the double e? I will walk around the room and check. (Observe progress). Now you will need three letterboxes for the next word. Remember to listen for the beginning sounds that will go in the first box. Then listen for our /E/ sound. Here is our new word feel. To feel is to be able to touch something. “Can you feel the wind on your face?”. (Allow the children time to spell the word). Time to check your work. Watch how I spell it in my letterboxes on the board: f---e---e---l. Now see if you spelled it this way. Let’s try another one with three letterboxes. Our new word is peer. “I love to hang out with my peers”. (Allow the children time to spell the word). Time to check your work. (Ask if someone would like to show it on the board). (Repeat this step for each new word). Now we have a new word. Listen to see if this word says /E/ in it before you spell it men. “Boys turn into men”. Did you need two e’s? Right, because we didn’t hear e says its name. We spell it with our short vowel e. (Have a volunteer spell it on the board). Now let’s try a word with 4 phonemes and 4 boxes bleed. “My knee bleed when I fell”. Remember you can stretch out the words to help you figure out hard ones.
5. Say: Now I’m going to let you read the words you’ve spelled, but first I’ll show you how I would read a tough word. (Display the board with bleed on top and model reading the word). First, I see there’s two e’s. That is my signal that the vowel will say its name. There’s two vowels e, so it must say /E/. I’m going to use my cover up critter to get the first part. (Uncover and blend sequentially before the vowel, then blend the vowel). /b/ + /l/ =/bl/. Now I’m going to blend that with /E/ = /blE/. Now all I need is the end. At the end is /d/ = /blEd/. Bleed,that’s it. Now it’s your turn, everyone together. (Have children read words together. Afterwards, take turns picking on children to read them one word at a time so everyone gets a turn).
6. Say: You have done a great job reading words with our new spelling for /E/, which is ee. Now we are going to read a book called Lee and the Team. This is Lee. He is the leader of his baseball team. His baseball team is all late and will not warm up. How will Lee get his team to run to get ready for the game? Let’s read on to see how Lee will get his team to warm up to play baseball. (Split children up in groups of 2 to read together then after every group is done read the book as a class. Stop and discuss after every page.)
7. Say: That was a great story! How did Lee’s team finally start to run? Correct, the bee stirred them up and got them to run. Now before we finish up with our lesson about one way to spell /E/ by ee I want to see how you can solve a reading problem all on your own. On this worksheet, there are pictures of many different objects/things. You are to say the names of each picture and circle each picture with the long e sound. After you finish you may color the pictures of the ones with /E/.(Collect worksheet to evaluate individual child progress).
Assessment worksheet
https://www.education.com/worksheet/article/learning-long-vowels-e/
References: Dr. Bruce Murray: http://wp.auburn.edu/rdggenie/
Geri Murray: https://sites.google.com/site/readingwritingconnection/beggingreadingdesign
https://www.education.com/worksheet/article/learning-long-vowels-e/
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