LESSONS IN LITERACY

Rationale:

 

This lesson teaches students about the long vowel correspondence i_e = /I/. This correspondence is a fundamental part of the spelling map that children must master in order to become successful readers. In this lesson students will learn to identify, spell, and read words that use the i_e correspondence. They will use a meaningful representation (pirates saying “aye, aye captain”) of the /I/ phoneme represented by the grapheme i_e to assist in their mastery of the correspondence. They will spell and read words using this spelling in a letterbox lesson, and read a decodable book that focuses on i_e = /I/.

 

Materials:

 

• Image of the pirate captain from the Spongebob Squarepants theme song

• Whiteboard with Elkonin letterboxes and large letter manipulatives that affix to the letterboxes (magnetic or Velcro)

• Expo markers

• Individual Elkonin letterboxes for each student along with letter manipulatives

• Word cards with spelling words

• Ipad, smartboard, or projector to display the decodable GenieBook The Bike Ride (link to file below)

• Assessment worksheet (URL below)

 

Procedures:

 

• Say: For us to be rock star readers, we have to learn the sounds that go with certain spellings. We have been building up our bank of sounds with short vowels like the /i/ that we hear in pig, and today we are going to learn about how a silent e makes words have a long /I/ sound. An easy way to remember this sound is to become a pirate and say, “Aye, aye captain!” [Show pirate captain image] Do you know who this is? It’s the captain at the beginning of the Spongebob song! He says, “Are you ready kids?” at the beginning of the song and they respond with, “Aye, aye captain!” When I say, “Are you ready kids?” I want you to respond with, “Aye, aye captain!” like the song [Ask students to say it twice].

 

• Before we can start spelling /I/ words, we need to listen for it in words. When I listen for /I/ words, I hear I say its name /I/. When I say /I/, my mouth opens up almost like a smile and my tongue doesn’t touch the top of my mouth like this [demonstrate mouth movement]. I’ll show you how I find /I/ in file [pronounce word slowly and blend]. Did you see how my mouth opens like before a smile when I got to the /I/? That means there is a long i in mice. Now, I’m going to see if I hear it in the word mint. My mouth didn’t open up wide, and I didn’t hear i say its name, so I know that long I isn’t in the word mint. Now I want you to try some. If you hear /I/, I want you to say, “Aye, aye captain!” and if you don’t hear it I want you to say, “Walk the plank!” Here we go: time, patch, dice, mine, ship, smile.

 

• Say: Okay, now that we have the sound down we are going to take a look at the spelling that triggers it. One-way to make the /I/ sound is with the letter i and a signal e at the end of the word that stays silent, telling me to say I’s name. Here is what it looks like [write i_e on the white board]. The blank in between i and e means that there is a consonant that comes after i, and at the end of the word there is a silent e signal. I want to spell the word stripe like, “The tiger has lots of stripes.” To spell stripe in letterboxes, I need to figure out how many phonemes are in the word first. I’m going to break the word up into all of its phonemes and count how many I have: /s/ /t/ /r/ /I/ /p/. Now that I have all of the sounds broken up, I count 5 phonemes for stripe.  That means I need 5 letterboxes. I hear my pirate /I/ right before the /p/ phoneme, so I will put i in the fourth letterbox and my silent e signal outside the boxes on the end. The word begins with /s/, so I know to put s in the first box. To figure out the other letters, I am going to say the word very slowly,/s/ /t/ /r/ /I/ /p/. /s/ /t/—I hear a t here after the /s/, so a t goes in the second box. Okay, now I have one more before the /I/. /s//t//r//I//p/, I think I hear an r before my pirate /I/, so that must go in the next box. One more letter to figure out! /s//t//r//I//p/. The /p/ at the end means the missing letter must be p.

 

• Say: Now I am going to have you spell some words in letterboxes. Your first word will only need two boxes, ice. Ice as in I want to eat an ice cream cone because it is hot outside. What should go in the first box? [Respond to children’s answers]. What goes in the second box? What about the silent e, did you remember to put it outside the boxes? I’ll check your spelling while I walk around the room. [Observe progress.] You’ll need three letterboxes for the next word. Listen for the beginning sound that goes in the first box. Then listen for /I/ and don’t forget to put the signal silent e at the end, outside the boxes. Here’s the word: lime; lemon lime soda is my favorite. [Allow children to spell words.] Time to check your work. Watch how I spell it in my letterboxes on the board: l – i – m – e and see if you’ve spelled it the same way. Try another with three boxes: ripe; the banana is ripe and ready to eat. [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. Listen to see if this word has /I/ in it before you spell it: ditch; don’t fall into the big ditch. Did you need a silent e? Why not? Right, because we don’t hear i say its name. We spell it with our short vowel i. [volunteer spells it on the front board.] Did you remember to spell /ch/ with a tch? Now let’s try 4 phonemes: slide; the slide on the playground is tall and curved. One more then we’re done with spelling, and this time you need five boxes: strike; in baseball strike three means you’re out. This word is tough, so remember to stretch out all of the phonemes.

 

• 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 tough word. [Display word card with strike and model reading the word.] First I see there’s a silent e on the end; that’s my signal that the vowel will say its name. There’s the vowel i. It must say /I/. I’m going to use a cover-up to get the first part. [Uncover and blend sequentially before the vowel, then blend with the vowel.] /s//t/ = /st/ + /r/ = /str/. Now I’m going to blend that with /I/ = /strI/. Now all I need is the end, /k/ = /strIk/. Strike; 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.]

 

• Say: You’ve done a great job and reading words with our new spelling for /I/: i_e. Now we are going to read a book called The Bike Ride. In this book, there is a boy named Nate who doesn’t like to move. He just likes to sit around all day, but his friends want him to come out and play with them. They try to get him to ride a bike and fly a kite. Do you think they’ll be able to get him up and moving? You’ll have to read to find out! I am going to put the book up on the smart board and I will call on someone to read each page. [Have students read each page, stopping to discuss events before each page turn. Once the story is finished, discuss the plot as a whole with the class].

 

• Say: They did it! They got Nate to ride the bike and he was even able to fly the kite. Isn’t it so important to get out and be active sometimes? Okay, now before we finish up with our lesson about one way to spell /I/ = i_e, I want to see how well you can identify i_e words when you read. On this worksheet, there are a bunch of different words. I want you to read every word and circle the ones that have /I/ in them. You can read the words in your head or quietly out loud to yourself. [Collect worksheets to evaluate individual child progress.]

 

Resources:

 

Catie Dennis, Aye, Aye Captain: https://sites.google.com/site/catiesreadinglesson/home/aye-aye-captain

 

Murray, G. (2007) The bike ride. Reading Genie: http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/bookindex.html

 

Assessment worksheet: http://www.funfonix.com/worksheets/book3_page16.php

 

Spongebob song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He-LBIyBUz8

 

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