By: Emily Little

 

Rationale: This lesson teaches children about the variant vowel correspondence ew=/U/. In order to read, children must learn to recognize the spellings that map word pronunciation. In this lesson, children will learn to recognize, spell, and read words containing the spelling ew. They will learn a meaningful representation (child with hand over mouth saying Ooh!), they will spell and read words containing this spelling in a Letterbox lesson, and read a decodable text that focuses on the correspondence ew.

Materials: Graphic image of child with hand over mouth; cover-up critter; colorful cardstock 2 square inch boxes for children and white board boxes drawn for teacher; letter manipulatives for each child and magnetic or smartboard letters for teacher: [-]; list of spelling words on poster or white board to read: [-]; decodable text: The Storm That Blew (page 41) and assessment worksheet.

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Procedures:

1. Say: In order to become reading masters, we need to learn the code that tells us how to pronounce words. We have already learned to read short vowel words and long vowel words, so we are ready to move on to a new sound /U/, and the digraph ew that helps us recognize this sound. When I say /U/, I think of hearing some good news, saying “Ooh I can’t believe it!” [show graphic image]

2. Say: Before we learn about the spelling of /U/, we need to listen for it in some words. When I listen for /U/ in words, I hear the sound when people say “ooh!” and my mouth makes a little o shape like this [show mouth shape]. I’ll show you first: chew. I heard the /U/ and I felt my lips make a little o [motion to pursed lips]. There is our /U/ in chew. Now I am going to see if I hear it in note. Hmm, I didn’t hear our shocked ooh sound and my lips didn’t make the little o. Now you try. If you hear /U/, put your hand over your mouth like you have heard some exciting news. If you don’t hear /U/, show me a big X with your arms out in front of you and say “Nope”. Is it in book, threw, hat, log, tune, flew, school, tube? [Have children make a hand over their mouth in shock when they feel /U/]

3. Say: Now let’s look at the spelling of /U/ we will learn today. One way to spell /U/ is with the letters e and w smashed together, which makes it a digraph. [Write ew on the board.] What if I want to spell the word grew? “I grew some flowers.” To spell grew in letterboxes, first I need to know how many phonemes, or sounds, I have in the word, so I stretch it out and count /g//r//ew/. I need 3 boxes. I heard that /U/ right after the /r/, so I am going to put the ew in the third box. Then I know the first sound was /g/ so I will put our g in the first box, and the r came right after so it will go in the second box.

4. Now I am going to have you spell some words in letter boxes. You will start out easy and spell new in letterboxes, so you need 2 boxes. “I got a new puppy today.” What should go in our first box? [Respond to children’s answers.] What should go in our last box? What is our /U/ spelling? I will walk around to see your spelling. [Observe progress.] Everyone did great, now lets move on to another one together. You will need 2 boxes this time. Listen for /U/ and place your phonemes in the boxes. Don’t forget to put our digraphs in one box, because they make one phoneme, or sound. Here’s the word: chew, I will chew my food with my mouth closed; chew. [Allow children to spell word.] Time to check your work. Watch how I spell it in my letter boxes on the board: ch-ew and see if we have spelled it the same way. Let’s try another word, make; I will make up a story; make. Did you hear our shocked “Ooh!” or feel your lips make a small o? No, so it does not have an ew spelling to make our /U/ sound! Let’s spell it anyway. Now we will try another word with 3 boxes: threw; I threw the baseball; threw. [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 /U/ in it before you spell it: chunk; I ate a chunk of cake; chunk. Did you hear our shocked “Ooh!” or feel your lips make a small o? No, so it does not have an ew spelling to make our /U/ sound! Let’s spell it together anyway to see how this spelling is different than our ew=/U/ sound. [Volunteer spells it on the board.] Let’s do another 3 phonemes again: blew; I blew a bubble; blew. Let’s try bride; My mom was a bride; bride. Did you hear our shocked “Ooh!” or feel your lips make a small o? No, so it does not have an ew spelling to make our /U/ sound! Let’s spell it anyway. One more and we will be done with spelling, and let’s try 3 boxes: brew; I will brew a cup of coffee; brew.

5. Say: Now I am going to let you read the words you have spelled, but first I will show you how to read a word. [Display poster with threw on the top and model reading the word.] First I see the ew at the end, and know we will be saying /U/. I am going to use a cover up to get the first part . [Uncover and blend sequentially before the vowel, then blend with the vowel.] /th//r/=/th/+/r/=/thr/. Now I am going to blend that with the ending /U/ to get our word /U/=/thrU/. Threw, that’s it! Now everyone say it together! [Have children read in unison an call on individuals to read one word on the list until everyone has had a turn and all words have been read.]

6. Say: You all have done a fantastic job reading and spelling words with our new spelling ew=/U/. Now we are going to read a passage called The  Storm That Blew. This is a story about a girl named Sue who is eating some stew and she hears the wind blowing outside. Will she get safe before a storm comes? Let’s open up our windows and hear for some wind when we read this story, taking turns, aloud in groups of 2. [If weather permits, open the windows, but if it is stormy, roll up the curtains to see outside. If this becomes a distraction, put them back down. Children will pair up to take turns reading the passage. I will walk around monitoring progress. After group reading, the class will read The Storm That Blew together, and stops between page turns to discuss the plot.]

7. Say: That was fun reading about the storm while taking a look outside to see our own weather. Did Sue ever get safe? Right, she closed the last window right before the storm came down on her house. What was she doing when she wasn’t watching the weather? Oh yeah, eating some stew and drinking some fruit juice. Before we finish up with our lesson about one way to spell /U/=ew, I want to see how you can solve a reading problem. On this worksheet, we have some blank spaces underneath the pictures. Your job is to look in the word bank of choices and match them with the best picture that is showing what the word is. First, look at the words in the box and see if you can quickly recognize some of the pictures that explain the words. [Collect worksheets to evaluate individual child progress.]

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Resources:

Text (page 43)

Assessment worksheet

Images: "NO!" , oo image

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