Aaaaa! Goes the Rollercoaster
Beginning Reading
a = /a/
Rationale:To help beginning readers they need to develop skills to decode unfamiliar words. This lesson was created to help readers develop these skills. Knowing that short vowels are the hardest of the phonemes to identify we will only focus on one short vowel. This lesson will focus on a=/a/. The goal of this lesson to help students recognize a=/a/ in the spoken and written word. By performimg the following activities it will help students learn to read words.
Materials:
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Image of roller coaster with hands up
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Cover-up critter
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Whiteboard
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Letterboxes for each student
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Letter tiles for each student and magnetic letters for teacher: a, t, c, n. d. d, p, h, r, b, s, k, l.
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Poster board with the words for the children to spell: at, cat, dad, nap, has, crab, splat, hand
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Decodable text: Pat’s Jam (Phonics Readers, Short Vowels: Book 2: Educational Insights, 1990)
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Assessment Worksheet
Procedures:
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Say: “Today we are going to learn about the short a and the mouth movements we do in order to say /a/. When I say /a/ think of riding a roller coaster and yelling. “Aaaaaa!” show graphic of the child riding a roller coaster. Now let’s look at which letter makes the /a/ sound.” I will have the student find the letter a.
2. Say: “Before we learn about the spelling of /a/, we are going to listen for the sound in some words. When I say /a/, my jaw drops and my tongue is down. (shows vocal gesture). When I say “can,” I heard the /a/ sound and felt my jaw drop and my tongue down. There is a short a in can. Now let’s see if it is in “big.” I did not hear the /a/ sound in big, nor my jaw drop and tongue down. Now it is your turn to try. When you hear the /a/ sound in a word, hold up your rollercoasters. Is it in gum, bag, sad, look, at?
3. Say: “Now let’s look at the words we are going to spell today. What if I want to spell the word "trap?” “The cat ran into the trap.” To spell "trap" with our letterboxes, I need to know how many phonemes are in the word so I can stretch it out and count. /t/, /r/, /a/, /p/. I need 4 letter tiles. I heart /a/ before /p/, so I am going to put a in the 3rdletterbox.
The word starts with a t, so I am going to put it in the 1stletterbox. There is one more tile after the t. Hmmm. /t/ ____ /a/ /p/. The second letter tile is /r/. Trap. Now I am going to show you how to read a tough word. Show students the word crab on a sheet of paper. I am going to start with the letter tile a, which makes our /a/ sound like riding on a rollercoaster. Now I’m going to put the beginning letters with it: c-r-a, /cra/. Now I will put that chunk together with the last sound. /cra-b/. Oh, crab as in, “I saw a crab on the beach.”
4. Say: “I am going to have you spell some words in the letterboxes. Let’s start out with two boxes. Since I only have two boxes, that means there will only be two phonemes. Your first word is an. ‘There is anoctopus in the water’ What should go in the first box? (Respond’s to children’s answers). What should go in second box? (Respond’s to children’s answers). I am going to walk around the room and check your spelling. Our next word will need three letterboxes because it has three phonemes.
5.Listen for the beginning sound that goes in the first box, then listen for /a/. The word is nap. ‘She was tired and needed a nap.’ (Allow for children to spell word). Time to check your work. Watch how I spell nap in my letterboxes on the board: n-a-p. Do you have it spelled the same way? Let’s try a new word with four letterboxes. There are four phonemes in this word because there are four letterboxes. Listen for the beginning sound that goes in the first box, then listen for /a/. The word is lamp. ‘Please go turn on the lamp.’ (Allow for children to spell word children will do their letterbox and then ask someone to volunteer how it is supposed to be spelled on the board). Our next word also has fourletterboxes. Now let’s try one with five letterboxes. If a word uses five letterboxes, then that means it has five phonemes. Your word is blast. “I am having a blast at school!”
6.Say: “Now I am going to let you read the words that you spelled, but first I want to show you how I personally read a difficult word. (display poster with splat at the top and model the reading word). I see that there is a /s/ in the beginning. That lets me know that I put /s/ in the first box because it makes one sound. Next is /p/ so I put that in the second box then /l/ in the third box. Then there is my vowel /a/. It must say /a/=i. I’m going to use my cover-up critter to get the last part of the word. (uncover and blend after the vowel, then blend with the vowel). /t/. Now I am going to blend that with /a/ /at/. Now I put everything together; /splat/. (Have children read the words all together. Call individual children to come and read a word from the list at your desk until everyone is done).
7.Say: “You have done a great job reading words with our new spelling for a=/a/. Now we are going to read a book called “Pat’s Jam.” Booktalk: Pat is a rat who has a friend Pam. They go shopping and get lots of food but when they get back in the car to go home the car ran out of gas! What will Pat and Pam do? You will have to read the story to find out. Let’s pair up to read what happens. (children pair up and take turns reading pages while the teacher walks around to see progress. The class will read the book together to finish the activity.)
8. Say: “That was a great story! (I will then call students individually to my desk to read a couple of pages from the book to me while I make notes of their miscues. The other students will work on a worksheet individually practicing identifying words with the a=/a/ correspondence. Students will color in the shapes two different colors depending on whether or not the word within the shape has short a.
Resources:
Assessment worksheet: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Short-a-Worksheet-1414920
Hannah Hardin, The Cake Was Ehh Because of the Extra Eggs: https://hanhardin1020.wixsite.com/readinglessondesigns/beginning-reader-design
Pat's Jam: Decodable Text
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