Ayy Man, Watch out!

A Beginning Reading Lesson

By Olivia McKnight

Rationale: This lesson teaches children about the long vowel correspondence a_e=/A/. In order to be able to read, children must learn to recognize the spellings that map word pronunciations. They will learn a meaningful representation,(someone saying “Ayy, watch out” when being bumped into), and spell and read words that have the /A/ in a letterbox lesson. Then read a decodable text that focuses on a_e = /A/. The goal for this lesson is for the child to be able to read, spell, and recognize words containing a_e =/A/.

Materials: Image of an angry man, whiteboard, Letterboxes for each child, plastic letter tiles for each child, magnetic letter's to model on the board (b,r,a,c,e,s,t,g,c,n,p,l,v),List of spelling words to read on a poster: brace,peg, stage, crane, grape, leg, grave, scrape; decodable book Jane and Babe for each pair of students, and assessment worksheet for each child.

Procedures:

1.Say: In order for us to become really good readers, we have to know the codes that tell us how to pronounce words. I know that you all have already learned the short vowel a, like apple; however, today we are learning the long vowel A and how the silent e makes it say /A/. When I say /A/, I like to think of an angry man saying Ayy! Watch out! when someone bumps into him (Show image of man). Now lets look at the spelling for /A/ that we are going to learn today. (I will write a_e on the board) The blank line in between the o leaves a place for a consonant and the e is silent at the end of the word. I like to think of the e as a mean letter which pinches the vowel and makes it say its name. This mean e tells the a to make the /A/ sound.

2.Say: Before we spell any words, we are going to listen for the /A/ sound in a some words. When I am listening for the /A/ sound in words, I hear a say /A/ and my mouth opens up =, dropping my jaw and then coming together again like you're taking a long bite of something, shape just like this (show vocal gesture for a). Let me show you how to listen for the /A/ sound first: game, I heard the a say its name, /A/, and felt my mouth open and jaw drop. I know that there is a long A in the word game. Now let's see if /A/ is in the word home. I did not hear /A/ in home and I did not have my mouth open and jaw drop. Now I want you guys to try. I am going to say some words and if you hear the /A/ sound say “Ayy man!,” if you do not hear the long A sound then say “Not this time." Is /A/ in state, fish, flame, food, grade?

3.Say: Now we are going to work on spelling a_e words. What if I wanted to spell tame, like the lion is so calm and tame. Before I can put tame in letterboxes, I need to know how many phonemes are in this word ,so I will stretch it out to count /t/ /A/ /m/. I hear 3 phonemes so I know I need 3 boxes. I know the last sound I hear was /m/ so I know the m goes in the last box. Before the m I heard /A/ so I know to put an a in the third box before the m and since the a says /A/, I know to put the mean letter e outside of the last box. I know that it starts with /t/ so I know to put an t in the first box. I now have spelled tame. Now I will show you how to read a tough word. (I will show the poster with the word game and model how to put the sounds together to read it) I will start with a_e because I know that makes the /A/ sound. Then I will put the beginning sound with /A/ and I get /g//A/ = ga, and finally put the chucks together and add the ending sound to make game, oh like "I like to play the gam hungry hungry hippo."

4.Now I want you to use your letterboxes and your plastic letter tiles that I gave to you. We will start out with an easy word and you'll need four boxes for this word, brace. A brace is a device used to keep things tight and sturdy, such as, “I hurt my knee so now I have to wear a brace.” Don't forget about that mean letter e. Remember to place it outside of the boxes. I am going to be walking around the room checking your spelling and making sure you know where your mean e goes. (observe progress)Time to check your work. Watch how I spell it in my letterboxes on the board: b-r-a-c-e and see if you’ve spelled it the same way. You will still need four boxes for this next word word, stage. Like, “ In the talent show I got to sing on stage." (Keep doing this same procedure and have a sentence with each word:crane, peg,grape, grave,leg, scrape). Now lets read the words you just spelled. Remember what I taught you about reading tough words and chunking parts together. I will show you a word on the board and I want the class to read them aloud together:brace, stage, peg,crane, grape, leg, grave, scrape and add a few other words like, tack, prave, frane .

5.Now you all have done so great today! We are going to read a book called “Jane and Bane" and it is about a lion tamer who goes into a cage that belong to a lion named Babe. She sees Babe in a deep sleep and does a few things to get Babe to wake up. She even tries screaming the lions name really loud. This seems to wake Babe up from her long nap.What is going to happen? Lets read and find out! I want you to pair up and take turns reading this book I want your partner to read a page and then you read one. Continue on like this and read the book. I also want you guys to talk about whats happening in the pictures and try to guess what might happen after Babe wakes up!. (I will be walking around the room observing as the kids are paired up alternating reading every other page. When everyone has finished reading, we will read the book as a class out loud and talk about it.)

6.Our last activity for the a_e lesson will be a worksheet. This worksheet has some sentences on the right side of the page that you should read and then on the left side of the page there are pictures the represent the long A words that you read. Circle those long A pictures. Make sure you listen for the /A/ sound and monitor your mouth opening and jaw dropping. (I will call students up one by one to assess knowledge learned in lesson.)

Resources:

Presley Hawkins, “Oh No! I dropped a Cheerio” http://auburn.edu/%7Epvh0001/hawkinsBR.html

Assessment worksheet: http://www.funfonix.com/worksheets/book3_page8.php

Decodable book: Murray, G. (2004) Jane and Babe. https://auburn.instructure.com/courses/963494/files/?preview=63242238 

http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/connections.html