I See a Bee! A Beginning Reading Lesson By Jarihope Coker
Rationale: This lesson teaches children about the long vowel correspondence ee = /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 the spelling ee. They will learn a meaningful representation (like the cute bee), 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: Graphic image of an animated bee; cover-up critter; whiteboard or smartboard Elkonin boxes for modeling and individual Elkonin boxes for each student; letter manipulatives for each child and magnetic or smartboard letters for teacher: b,e,f,d,r,l,e; list of spelling words on poster or whiteboard to read: bee, feed, reef, reel; decodable text: Lee and the Team, and assessment work sheet.
Procedures: 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 short vowel words with e, like red, and today we are going to learn about long E and the two e’s next to each other drags the e sound out like, /E/. When I say /E/ I think of a cute little bee flying in the sky [show 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 hear e say its name /E/ and my mouth stretches out forming a straight line like this. [Make vocal gesture for /E/.] I’ll show you first: feed. I heard e say its name and I felt my mouth stretch out into a straight line [make a motion so the straight line your lips form]. There is a long E in see. Now I’m going to see if it’s in bed. Hmm, I didn’t hear e say its name and my lips didn’t form a straight line. Now you try. If you hear /E/ say, “I see a bee!” If you don’t hear /E/ say, “No.” Is it in reef, late, wreck, seed, road, lips? [Have children make a motion around their straight lips when they stretch out /E/.] 3.Say: Now let’s look at the spelling of /E/ that we’ll learn today. One way to spell /E/ is with the letter e and another e right next to it to tell me to say E’s name. [Write ee on the board.]. What if I want to spell the word feel? “If I fall down I feel sad.” feel means an emotion in this sentence. To spell feel in letterboxes, first I need to know how many phonemes I have in the word so I stretch it out and count: /f//ee//l/. I need 3 boxes. I heard that /E/ just before the /l/ so I’m going to put ee in the 2nd box and the /l/ in the third letterbox. The word starts with /f/, that’s easy; I need an f in the first letterbox. Now I’m going to say it slowly, /f//ee//l/. Now we’ve completed all three of our letterboxes and figured out where all our letters go! 4.Say: Now I’m going to have you spell some words in letterboxes. Let’s start with an easy one that will only be two letterboxes, let’s do the word fee. Fee is like how much something cost, with money. “That is a very big fee for those shoes!” What should go in the first box? [Respond to child’s answer]. What goes in the second box? Did you remember to put ee in the same letter box? I can check your spelling now (observe progress). You’ll need three letterboxes for the next word. Listen for the beginning sound that goes in the first letter box. Then listen for the long E and finally listen out for the last letter that will go in the third letterbox. Here’s the word: meet, I can’t wait to meet my friend; meet. [Allow child to spell word]. Time to check your work. Watch how I spell in my letterboxes on the board: M-ee-t and see if you’ve spelled it the same way. Try another with three boxes: feet; I need to wash my feet. [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 /E/ in it before you spell it: reef; fish live in a reef in the ocean. Did you put ee together? You did? Great job! We spell it with our long vowel E. [volunteer spells it on the front board.] Did you remember to put /f/ at the end? Great! Now let’s try 4 phonemes: freed; the dog was freed from his cage. Now we are all done with spelling, great effort today! 5.Say: Now I am going to let you read the words you spelled, but first I will show you how I would read a tough word.[Display poster with the word feel at the top and model reading the word]. First I see ee together so I know that is the long E sound. Then I see a /f/ at the beginning and a /l/ at the end. I will use my cover up critter to slowly uncover the word and blend the whole word so I can read it all together. Now it’s your turn to give it a try! 6. Say: You’ve done a great job spelling words with our ee=/E/. Now we are going to read a book called Lee and the Team. This is a story about Lee who is the leader of a team, but his team is running late! Will they make it on time, what are they going to do?? We’ll have to read the rest of the story to see what Lee decides to do. Let’s pair up and take turns reading this fun story so we can see what happens! 7. Say: That was a fun story. Did Lee’s team make it on time? Right, they did. What helped them make it on time? Right, a bee made them all run really fast. Before we finish up with our lesson about one way to spell /E/ = ee, I want to see how you can solve a reading problem. On this worksheet, we have some words missing. Your job is to look in the box of word choices, and decide which ee word fits best to make sense of this very short story. First try reading all the words in the box, then choose the word that fits best in the space. Reread your answers to see if they make sense. [Collect worksheets to evaluate individual child progress.] Resources: Oh Oh My Knees Hurt by Noie Yancey http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/invitations/yanceybr.htm http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/bookindex.html Assessment sheet: http://www.free-phonics-worksheets.com/html/phonics_worksheet_v1-39.html