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Beginnging Reading

Aye Aye Capatin!

By Mary Ashley Kinney

Rationale: 

this lesson teaches children about the long vowel correspondence i_e=/I/. For the student to progress in reading they must learn to recognize new spellings that go along with pronunciations. In this lesson, they will learn how to spell, recognize, and read words that have the i_e spelling. They will learn a meaningful representation (a pirate saying aye aye!), they will spell and read words that contain the long I vowel in a letterbox lesson and then read a decodable book containing this correspondence. 

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Materials: 

Graphic image of pirate; cover up critter; whiteboard and letter magnets and letter boxes for each individual child; letter tiles for each student and letter magnets for the teacher: c, e, f, i, k, l, m, r, s, t, v; List of spelling words on poster or whiteboard to read: ice, five, live, sick, smile, strive, strike; decodable text: Five Nice Mice and the Great Car Race and assessment worksheet

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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 i, like sip, and today we are going to learn about long I and the silent e signal that is used to make I say its name, /I/. When I say /I/ I think of a pirate saying “Aye aye
captain!” [show graphic imagine].

2. Say: Before we learn about the spelling of /I/, we need to listen for it in some words. When I listen for /I/ in words, I hear i say its name /I/ and my mouth opens widely and closes like this. [Make vocal gesture for /I/.] I’ll show you first: time. I heard i say its name and I felt my mouth open widely [make mouth open widely then close]. There is a long I in time. Now I’m going to see if it’s in tip. Hmm, I didn’t hear i say its name and my mouth didn’t open widely then close. Now you try. If you hear /I/ say, “Aye aye captain.” If you don’t hear /I/ say, “That’s not it.” Is it in kick, ripe, kite, lip, name, loss?

[Have children open their mouths widely then close them when they feel /I/ say its name.]

3. Say: Now let’s look at the spelling of /I/ that we’ll learn today. One way to spell /I/ is with the letter i and a signal e at the end of the word to tell me to say I’s name. [Write i_e on the board.] This blank line here means there is a consonant after i, and at the end of the word there is a little silent e signal. What if I want to spell the word strike? “If I throw three strikes the batter will be out.” Strikes refers to baseball in the sentence. To spell strike in letterboxes, first I need to know how many phonemes I have in the word so I stretch it out and count: /s//t//r//I//k/. I need 5 boxes. I heard that /I/ just before the

/k/ so I’m going to put an i in the 4th box and the silent e signal outside the last box. The word starts with /s/, that’s easy; I need an s. Now it gets a little tricky so I’m going to say it slowly, /s//t//r//I//k/. I think I heard /t/ so I’ll put a t right after the s. One more before the /I/, hmm . . . /s//t//r//I//k/, I think I heard growling /r/ so I need an r. I have one empty box now. [Point to letters in boxes when stretching out the word: /s//t//r//I// k/.] The missing one is /k/ = k.

|s|t|r|i|k| e

4. Say: Now I’m going to have you spell some words in letterboxes. You’ll start out easy with two boxes for ice. An ice cube, “I like a lot of ice cubes in my water” What should go in the first box? [Respond to children’s answers]. What goes in the second box? What about 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: five, I have five dogs, five. [Allow children to spell words.] Time to check your work. Watch how I spell it in my letterboxes on the board: f – i – v – e and see if you’ve spelled it the same way. Try another with three boxes:live; we live in Auburn. [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: sick; I hate being sick. 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 /k/ with a ck? Now let’s try 4 phonemes: smile; She has a pretty smile. One more then we’re done with spelling, and this time you need five boxes: strive; I strive to get an A. Remember to stretch it out to get this tough word.

5. 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 poster with strive on the top 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/ = /strO/. Now all I need is the end, /v/ = /strIv/. Strive; 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.]

6. 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 Five Nice Mice and the Great Car Race. This is about a group of mice racing to win "the biggest piece of cheese anyone has ever seen" towards the end of the race they are challenged. Lets read to see how the mice overcome this challenge and who gets the prize! [Children pair up and take turns reading alternate pages each while teacher walks around the room monitoring progress. After individual paired reading, the class rereads Kite Day at Pine Lake aloud together, and stops between page turns to discuss the plot.]

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Assessment:

Now let’s apply what we have learned! I want to see how you can solve a reading problem. This worksheet has some words missing. Your job is to look at the photo and write the name of the picture using the vowel correspondence i_e. Once you finish read all the words and listen to see if they say the “aye, aye” and have the /I/ sound. Check your answers to see if they make sense. (grade students individually)

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Resources:

Five Nice Mice and the Great Car Race by Chistato Tashiro  

Long i Magic Worksheet 

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