Miss Lindsey's

Rationale:

 This lesson teaches children about the short vowel correspondence u= /u/. In order to be able to read, children must learn to recognize the spellings that map word pronunciations. In this lesson children will learn to recognize, spell, and read words containing the spelling u. They will learn a meaningful representation (confused man saying uh, I don’t know?), they will spell and read words containing this spelling in a Letterbox lesson, and read a decodable book that focuses on the correspondence u = /U/.

Materials:

• Image of the shrugging emoji.

• Cover up critters

• Plastic letter manipulatives for each student

• Letterboxes for students

• Letterboxes drawn on whiteboard or on smart board for teacher

• Magnetic or otherwise letters for teacher (a, e, i, o, u, c, p, l, m, p)

• Fuzz and the Buzz (decodable book)

• Dry-erase markers

• words written on whiteboard for students to read: hug, plum, dunk, luck, hunt, chuck

• print out assessment

Procedures:

1. Say: In order to become super great reader, we need to learn a secret code that will tells us how to pronounce words. Can anyone tell me how many vowels are in the alphabet? (let them answer) Yes, there are 5 vowels. We have gone through four of the vowels, a, e, i, and o. Can someone remind me what those vowels sound like? (let them give me the short vowel sounds for each). Great job remembering how to pronounce those vowels! Today we are going to learn the short u sound. When I say /u/ I want you to think of a girl named Cara who is confused and doesn’t know the answer. (show picture of kid lifting his arms up in confusion).

2. Say: Before we learn what the the spelling of /u/ looks like, we need to listen for it in some words. To make the sound /u/ my jaw drops a tiny bit and my mouth opens! [Make vocal gesture for /u/.] Look at my mouth when I say cup. (repeat c uuuu p, cup) When I say “cup” I heard the /u/ sound and felt my jaw drop and my mouth open. That’s how I know there is a short-u in cup. Let’s listen to the word park.  When I hear park, I don’t hear the /u/ sound and I don’t feel my jaw drop and my mouth open. That means the short u is not in the word park. Now I want you to try it on your own. When you hear the /u/ sound I would like you to put your hands up and out to the side and shrug your shoulders like the kid in the picture. (show them how to do it). Is it in dog, jump, crash, or boom?

3. Say: Now that we can find the /u/ sound when we listen for it in words, let’s look at which letter makes that sound!  I’m going to place the five vowels on the wall and I want you to tell me what the first four sound like. (go through each of them) What happens when we want to spell lump? “Joey found a lump of coal in his stocking.” A lump is like a chunk of something. When we listen to the word lump, we hear the /u/ sound, but none of the vowels we just sounded out said /u/. We do have one vowel left and that is the U. The letter U makes the sound /u/. Now that we know that the letter U makes the /u/ sound we can spell lump! To spell lump in letterboxes, first I need to know how many phonemes are in the word so what I am going to do is stretch it out and count: /l//u//m//p/. (count with finger as I sound it out). I need four letterboxes. I heard /u/ just before the /m/ and /p/ and because we just found out that the letter U makes the /u/ sound, I’m going to put a U letter tile in the 2nd box. The word starts with /l/, so I need the L letter tile in the first box. there are 2 more boxes after the u. Let’s sound out that word again. /l//u//m//p/. The /m/ sound came third, so we know to put the m letter tile in the third box. Lump ends with /p/ so we put the p letter tile in the last box.

4. Say: Now I’m going to have you spell some words in letterboxes. [pass out letter boxes] You’ll start out easy with three boxes for pug. Like, “My favorite animal is a pug.” What should go in the first box? [Respond to children’s answers]. What goes in the second box? How about the third? I will walk around and see how you did. [Observe progress.] For the next word, you are going to need four letterboxes. Listen for the beginning sound and put it in the first box. Then, listen for /u/. Here’s the word: bump. “My friend has a bump on his head.” bump. [Allow students to spell the remaining words: hug, plum, dunk, luck, hunt, chuck. Have a volunteer student come up to the board and spell the word so the other students can check their work.]

5. Now I will show you how I would read the tough word. (Display poster with clump on the top and model reading the word). If I didn’t know how to read it before I might have thought U said /U/. So I would have said /c//l//U//m//p/. Now that I know the U says /u/ I know how to properly say it! I’m going to start with the u letter tile; remember that U says /u/. I’m going to use a cover-up critter to get the last part of the word. Now I’m going to put the beginning letters with it: c-l-u, /clu/. Now I’ll put that chunk together with the last sound, /clu-m-p/. Oh, clump as in “I have a clump of rocks in my drawer.”  [Have students read words in all together. Afterwards, call on individuals to read one word on the list until everyone has had a turn].

6. “You all have done a great job listening, spelling, and reading with the sound /u/. Now we’re going to read an awesome book called Fuzz and the Buzz! This book is about a bear cub named Fuzz. Fuzz loves his home but he loves the sun more, so he runs away from home. He runs so far that he gets lost and bumps into a beehive. When he tries to run from the bees can’t find his way back.  Do you think the bees will catch up and sting him? Do you think he will ever find his way home? Let’s see what happens to Fuzz.”  [Have students get in groups of two and read the book out loud, each child switching reading pages, during this walks around the room and supervise progress as well as providing scaffolding if necessary. After everyone is finished, the class will reread the story out loud and in between pages to talk about what is happening.]

7. Holy Moly! I am so glad Fuzz got home safe. That would have hurt a lot! Now we’re going to work on a worksheet. Color the words that have a short “u” sound in the picture brown. Color any word that does not have the short “u” sound red. When you are all done coloring there will be a picture that appears. Write what the picture is on the line below. I am asking you to work on this on your own and then when you’re finished come to bring me your worksheet so I can look it over. [Check each worksheet for accuracy and give further instruction as needed, identify students who are struggling and may need extra practice].