Aaaaa Cried the Baby!
Beginning Reading
Rationale:
In order for students to learn how to read, they must first learn vowel correspondences. They need to learn the correspondences between sounds and letters in order to decode words. In this lesson, children will learn to recognize, spell, and read words containing the correspondence a=/a/. They will learn a meaningful representation, they will learn and spell words within the Letterbox Lesson, and they will read a decodable book that focuses on the correspondence a=/a/.
Materials:
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Gif of baby crying (URL Below)
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Laminated baby crying picture with a in its mouth
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Cover-up critter
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Whiteboard
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Elkonin boxes for each student
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Letter manipulatives for each child and magnetic or smartboard letters for teacher
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s, p, l, a, t, r, g, d, d, h, m, c, b, n, k, l
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List of spelling words:
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List words on poster or whiteboard: rag, add, ham, crab, pan, tab, splat, nang, hack, mask, snack
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Decodable book: A Cat Nap
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Assessment worksheet (URL Below)
Procedures
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Say: In order to become expert readers, we need to learn the code that tells us how to pronounce words and letters. All the letters in the alphabet have their own sounds and make us move our mouths a certain way. Today, we are going to learn about the letter a and the short vowel sounds it makes, which is /a/. When I say /a/, I think of a baby crying, “Aaaa! Aaaaa!” Have you ever heard a baby cry really loud like that?
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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. (Show vocal gesture). When I say bag, I hear the /a/ sound and felt my jaw drop and my tongue down. There is a short a in bag. Now let’s see if there is /a/ in gum. I didn’t hear the /a/ sound in gum, did you? Also, my jaw and tongue did not drop down, so we know /a/ is not in gum. Now it is your turn to try. When you hear the /a/ sound in a word, hold up your crying baby. Is it in lip, mat, rug, tag, cook, in, at, pack?
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Say: Now let’s look at the spelling of /a/ that we’ll learn today. What if I wanted to spell the word splat? “The bug went splat on the windshield.” (Now show hand motion of something going splat). To spell splat in letterboxes, first I need to know how many phonemes I have in the word, so I stretch it out and count: /s//p//l//a//t/. I need 5 boxes. I heard that /a/ just before the /t/, so I am going to put an a tile in the 5th box. The word starts with /s/, that’s easy: I need an s. Now it gets a little hard so I’m going to say it slowly, /s//p//l//a//t/. I think I heard /p/ so I’ll put a p right after the s. I hear one more letter before the /a/, hmmm /s//p//l//a//t/, I think I heard /l/ so I need an l. I have one empty box now. (Point to letterboxes when stretching out the word /s//p//l//a//t/). The missing one it /t/=t.
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Say: Now I’m going to have you spell some word in letterboxes. You’ll start out easy with two boxes for the word add. Add in this sentence means to put two numbers together. “I can add two plus two.” What should go in the first box? What goes in the second box? I’ll check your spelling as I walk around the room. (Observe progress). You need three letterboxes for the next word. Listen for the beginning sound that goes in the first box. Then listen for /a/. Here’s the word: rag. “I wiped up the spilled milk with a rag.” (Allow children to spell words). Time to check your word. Watch how I spell it in my letterboxes on the board: r – a – g and see if you’ve spelled it the same way. Try another with three boxes: ask. “I need to ask you a question.” (Have a volunteer spell it in the letterbox on the front board for children to check their work. Repeat this step for each new word: ham, crab, snack, pan, tab, ball.
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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 sank on the top and model reading the word). 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).
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Say: You’ve done a great job at reading words with our new spelling for /a/=a. Now we are going to read a book called A Cat Nap. This is a story of a cat named Tab. He gets a full belly from eating a lot of his cat food and wants to go take a nap. He finds a bag to sleep in and falls asleep instantly because he’s so tired. Sam, Tab’s owner, picks up the bag and takes it to baseball practice with him since it has his stuff in it. He doesn’t know Tab is in the bag. Let’s see what happens when Sam realizes Tab is actually in the bag! Will Tab escape without Sam knowing or will he pop out in the middle of baseball practice? (Children pair up and take turns reading alternate pages while the teacher goes around the room and monitors progress. After the paired reading, the class rereads A Cat Napout loud together, and stops between pages to discuss the plot).
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Assessment: Students will be provided a picture page where they should circle the pictures with the /a/ sound. While students work on the picture page, I will call students up one at a time to assess their reading of A Cat Nap and their understanding of the correspondence a = /a/. I will be using a running record.
Resources:
Book: Cushman, S. A Cat Nap. Educational Insights, Carson, CA (USA). 1990
Anderson, Morgan (2018). Beginning Reading Design: Aaaa, an Alligator!
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