Reading with Miss Mungenast

Procedures: 

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1. Say: For us to become expert readers, we need to learn the secret code that tells us how to say
   words. We have already learned how to read the short vowel words with the short a in them like hat and tap. Today, we will learn all about long A. There is a silent e signal that is used to make A say its name, /A/. Have you ever seen Alice in Wonderland before? When you say the sound /A/, I want you to think of the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland running and saying “I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date!” [Show graphic image from Alice in Wonderland]. Let’s look at the way that we spell /A/. There are a couple of ways to spell /A/, but the way that we are going to learn about today is with the letter a and signal e at the end, which tells us to say A’s name. [Write a_e on the board]. The blank space in between a and e means that there is a consonant in between the two vowels. The silent e signal at the end makes /A/ say the “A” sound.

2. Say: Before we learn about the spelling of /A/, we need to listen for it in some words. Let’s listen together for the /A/ sound in words. When I listen for the /A/ sound, I hear a say its name like in late or tape. When you hear the /A/ sound, you move your mouth by opening and closing it, like you are catching a baseball in a baseball mitt. We’re going to practice recognizing the sound /A/ by saying “Abe the ape can’t be late for his date!” We’re going to practice stretching out the /A/ sound as we say this. Open the baseball glove really wide and close it shut to catch the baseball as you say the letter /A/! “Aaaaabe the aaaaaape can’t be laaaaate for his daaaate!”. Let’s practice saying and listening for the /A/ sound in other words. If you hear /A/ in a word, catch a baseball in your baseball mitt. If you don’t hear /A/, keep your baseball mitt closed. [Practice this with students by saying words: grade, tap, ball, brown, grapes, cop, scrape”.]

3. [Pull out letterboxes and letter manipulatives to do this part of lesson] Say: Let’s say our tongue tickler again! “Abe the ape can’t be late for his date!”. What if we want to spell the word ape? An ape is a really big monkey, like we see in the zoo. [Pull out letterbox with two letterboxes]. As we’ve learned, to make the /A/ sound, we need a and a silent e at the end with a consonant in between. So we put a in the first box, and we put e outside the second box because it is silent. The consonant in the word ape is the letter p, so we put that in the middle. “/A/p/”. “AAAAA-ppppp”. Let’s practice with another word. Abe the ape can’t be late for his date! Let’s practice spelling the word late. This time, we need three letterboxes. We can go ahead and put “a” in the second letterbox, and “e” outside the third letterbox because we know that it is silent. The /l/ sound comes at the beginning, and the /t/ sound is the consonant that comes between the /A/ and the silent e. We’re going to say it slowly: /l//a// t//e/.

4. Say: Now I’m going to have you spell some words in letterboxes. I have a list of words that have the /A/ sound in them, and I am going to read them out loud and have you spell them in the letterboxes. We are going to start out with an easy word in two letterboxes, ate. “I ate a pizza yesterday”. Spell ate in the boxes! Let’s remember what the silent e does. It makes the / A/ sound and it goes outside the second box! [Observe progress and affirm]. Now let’s do another word! I want for you to spell the word grade. “I want to get a good grade on my test”. [Give time to continue to spell words on list: hat, plane, crab, blaze, scrape, plant].

5. Say: Now we are going to practice reading the words that we have spelled! [Show words ate, grade, plane, blaze, scrape and pseudoword vate on a poster board]. Go around room and have students say words from the poster board one at a time, then have students read all the words together in unison. [Take the poster board down]. Then, pass around notecards to each student that has one of those words written on them. Have students go around the room and say the word on their card aloud for the class. Allow each of the students to read a card aloud.

6. Say: I’ve been so impressed with the way that you have learned our new sound and been able to read so many new words with /A/: a_e. Now, we are going to read a book called James and the Good Day. James wants to have a good day and play lots of games. The first game he plays is with his tug boat. He wants to sail his tug boat in the bath tub. He tries to make his bath tub into a big lake for the boat. Keep reading to find out what happens next! Split up into pairs and take turns reading James and the Good Day. Take turns on who reads what page. After your partner finishes reading that page, ask them a question about what happened on that page of the story. When each of you finish reading, sit still and quiet so I know that you are done! When everyone is done reading, we will read the story together again as a class! [Reread story having different children read each page, and talking through each page of the story together as a class].

7. Say: Before we finish our lesson about one of the ways we spell /A/ = a_e, let’s play a quick reading game! On this worksheet, we have words that have the long /A/ sound and words that do not. Circle all of the words that have the long /A/ sound in it!