Aye, Let’s Enjoy Cake!
A Beginning Reading Lesson
By Madison Gillis
Rationale: This lesson teaches children about the long vowel correspondence a_e = /A/. To learn to read, it is vital that children start to recognize spellings to help with word pronunciations. In this lesson children will learn to recognize, spell, and read words that contain a_e = /A/. A representation with a_e (enjoying cake) will be a helpful reminder, words that contain this spelling will be included in the letterbox lesson, and they will read a book that focuses on the correspondence of a_e = /A/.
Materials: Graphic image of enjoying cake, cover-up critter, letterboxes, letter manipulatives for each child and magnetic letters for teacher, listed spelling words on a poster for children to read: make, fade, game, tape, lake, shame, decodable text: Jane and Babe and an assessment worksheet.
Procedures:
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Say: Who wants to be an expert at reading? Everyone, right? In order to do this we need to learn the code that tells us how to pronounce words. We have already learned to read short vowel letters such as a, like cat, and in this lesson we are going to learn about long A and the silent e that is the signal that shows us to make A say /A/. Whenever I say /A/ I like to think of one of my favorite foods, cake! You can think of yourself enjoying cake as well. (show image of enjoying cake)
2. Say: Before we learn about the spelling of /A/, let’s try and listen for it in some words. When I listen for /A/ in words, I hear a_e make the /A/ sound. When I say any word with a_e, making the /A/ sound I notice that I hear “aye” in the word, like “aye, let’s enjoy cake!” For example, there is a long A in the word made. Now I am going to see if it is in mad. I didn’t hear that “aye” that I was looking for when I said the word mad. Now, it’s your turn! Let’s see if we can detect that “aye” in some words. If you hear “aye” say “Aye let’s have some cake.” If you don’t hear it, then say “That’s not it.” Is it in coat, state, ride, lake, ran, sake, or seed?
3. Say: Now let’s look at the spelling of /A/ that we will learn today. One was to spell /A/ is with the letter a and a signal of e at the end of the word to tell me how to say A’s name. (demonstrate on the board by writing a_e.) This blank line in between both of the letters tells us that there is a consonant after A, and at the end of the word there is a little silent E signal. Let’s say that I want to spell the word state. “Do you live in the state of Georgia or Alabama?” State means a location in this sentence. To spell the word state in letterboxes, first I need to figure out how many phonemes are in the word, so I will stretch it out and count: /s//t//A//t//. I need 4 boxes. I heard that /A/ just before the /t/ so I’m going to be the /A/ in the 3rd box and the silent e signal outside of the last box. The word starts off with /s/, so I need an s. It gets a little harder now so I will say it slower, /s//t//a//t//. I heard a /t/ so I’ll put another t right after the /s/ and before the /A/. I know that there must be a consonant in between our /A/ and what was that other letter? Oh, an /e/! But, our e doesn’t go into one of the boxes, it goes outside of the last box.
4. Say: Now I am going to have you spell some words in letterboxes. You’ll start out easy with the word “make.” This word has 3 boxes. (write 3 boxes on board) When we sound out the word, we hear an /m/. Oh, then you hear a what? A long A, that’s correct! So if we have an /A/, then we hear “aye” and what did we say was our signal that made /A/ sound that way? An e at the end of the word, yes. So now we need to figure out what’s in between the a and the e. Remember that we are looking for a consonant. (make sure that first two boxes are filled with m and a) Let’s sound out our word again /m//a//k//. (put emphasis on /k/) “I need to make a cake today.” (allow children to spell out word and write /k/ in 3rd box) Now that you have had a little help, I want you to try on your own. What about the word shake? Now, this word has 4 boxes. (have students spell out the word in 4 boxes) Time to check your work. Watch how I spell it in my letterboxes on the board: s-h-a-k-e and see if you are correct in the way that you did it. Good job!
5. Say: Now I’m going to let you read the words you’ve spelled, but first I want to showy how I would read a word that is difficult. (Put up poster that has the word state on it and model reading the word) First I can see that there is a silent e on the end, and so that’s my signal that the vowel will say it’s name, so in this case /A/. I am going to use a cover-up to get the first part. (uncover and blend before the vowel, then blend it with the vowel) /s//t/ = /st/. Now I am going to blend that with /A/=/stA/. Now all I need is the end, /t/ = /stAt/. State, that’s the word. Now it’s your turn to take a whack at it, so let’s say it together. (have children read the words in unison and then call on separate children in order to make sure that everyone has an individual turn)
6. Say: Each of you have done a wonderful job reading words with our new spelling for a_e = /A/. Now for the fun part! We get to read a book called Jane and Babe. This is the story of a zoo worker named Jane who goes to visit her favorite lion, Babe. When she goes to visit Babe, uh oh! Babe is asleep! What will Jane do in order to wake up Babe? We will have to read along to find out. How about we all find a partner and read the book together. Once we are done, we can read the story aloud in a big group. (let children find partners and walk around to monitor progress as they read in pairs. After pair readings, the class will read Jane and Babe together.)
7. Say: What a great story! I hope you enjoyed finding out what Jane did in order to wake Babe up so they could have a good time together. Now, we are going to do one more thing before we are finished. This is one more activity to help us practice those a_e = /A/ words to make sure we have got them down. I have a worksheet where we are going to circle and sort. Remember how we sounded out our words in order to understand the spelling? This worksheet is the exact same process. (hold up sheet) You are going to circle any words you see in each numbered sentence that include a_e. Then, you are going to write the words that end in -ate in the first column, and then write the words that have -ake at the end in the second column. This will be one last good review of how to sound out words and determine what they are based on the sounding out and spelling of the words.
Resources:
Book: Cushman, Sheila Jane and Babe https://www.librarything.com/work/10868897
