Beginning Reading

Aye Aye Captain!

A Beginning Reading Lesson

By: Hannah Tarwater

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Rationale: This lesson teaches children about the long vowel correspondence i_e = /I/. For students to become skilled readers, they must be able to decode not only letter by letter but more complex spelling patterns, such as the silent e. In this lesson, students will learn to spell and read words containing the spelling i_e. They will do this by learning a hand gesture (saluting the captain) and tongue tickler, spelling and reading words with i_e = /I/ in a letterbox lesson, and reading a book that contains this correspondence for practice.

Materials: print out of a man saluting a captain with the tongue tickler and i_e ; cover-up critter; letter boxes and individual letters for each student: i, e, d, v, b, r, m, s, h, n, c, l, b, t; list of spelling words on large flashcards: dive, bride, dime, shine, mice, smile, line, bite; decodable text: “The Nice Mice”; primary paper and pencils for each student; and assessment worksheet

Procedures:

1. Say: We have already learned how to read short vowels like i. What does “I” say? (Let students answer together). Sometimes, our i says its name /I/ instead of sticky icky /i/. This sounds like when you salute a captain of a ship, and you say, “Aye aye, captain!” [show picture of man saluting the captain]. Can everyone say that with me? (We all say, “Aye aye, captain!”) We call this a long vowel when we say /I/. How will we know if our i says our short vowel sound /i/ or our long vowel sound /I/? We know when it’s going to say /I/ because there will be a magical silent e on the end that signals to us to say the long vowel sound /I/.

2. Say: Before we learn about the spelling of /I/, we need to listen for it in some words. When we hear /I/ in words, we hear i say its name, and we hear someone saluting the captain. Aye aye! [make saluting hand gesture]. For example, I hear /I/ in the word bite (pronounce b-I-t emphasizing the /I/ sound). So bite does have our long i sound. Let’s see if we hear it in kick (pronounce k-i-k). I did not hear myself saying “Aye aye!” so it does not have out our long I sound in it. We do hear our icky sticky short i sound, but that’s not the one we’re looking for. Okay now it’s your turn. I want you to see if you can hear the /I/ sound in some words too. If you hear it, salute me, your captain for the day, and say “Aye aye!” Is our long i in nice, back, stick, bike, dive?

3. Say: Now that we know what /I/ sounds like, let’s learn how to spell it. One way to spell /I/ is with the letter i and a magical e at the end of the word to tell me to say i’s name. [Point to the i_e on the the paper] This blank line here means there is a consonant after i, and at the end of the word there is a magical silent e. We hear our long i sound in the word slime, as in “Let’s go make some slime after school!” To spell slime, I need to figure out how many phonemes there are in the word, so we need to stretch it out and count on our fingers each time we hear a sound. /s/ /l/ /I/ /m/ I counted 4 sounds so let’s put 4 letterboxes out. I hear the /I/ sound right before our /m/ so I’m going to put an i in the 3rd box, m in the 4th box, and our magical silent e outside the letterboxes at the end since it’s silent and we don’t say the sound. Now, what do we put in our first letterboxes? Well I heard a /s/ at the beginning of slime so I will put s in the first box. Then, I need to really listen and sound it out to get our second letter. /s/ /l/ /I/ /m/. It’s the /l/ sound so we will put l in this box.

4. Say: Now it’s your turn to spell words in letterboxes! Pull out just two letterboxes so we can spell the word ice, like “Do you want some ice in your water?” What do you think you should put in the first box? [Respond to children’s answers]. What about the second box? Since we have our long i sound in there, did you make sure to put our magical silent e outside the letterboxes? [Observe, scaffold, correct]. Great! For our next word, it will be a little longer so add one more letterbox to your two. Listen closely, and don’t forget about our magical silent e if you hear the /I/ sound. Spell the word kite, like “I love to fly a kite on the beach.” (After they spell the word) Check to see if you spelled it like I did. [Show them your letterboxes and explain why you chose those letters]. I like how I see that y’all remembered to put that silent magical e. That tells us we are going to have a long i sound which we do have in kite. We will try one more with another letterbox before we start reading some words so everyone, please get out one more letterbox! [repeat same process as you did with kite and ice]. Now, what about the word win – I hope my team wins in the volleyball game tonight – everyone spell this word but think about if we need a silent e or not. Think about if we have a short or a long vowel. Do we need a silent e or not? Why? [respond to student answers and observe/correct their spelling, giving explanations as needed).

5. Say: Now that we know how to spell words, we get to read words. Let me show you first how I read one and then it will be your turn. [show paper with the word spike] I see that magical silent e at the end that makes our vowels long so I know I need to say /I/ for our vowel. Before our vowel I have /s/ /p/ /sp/. I’m going to blend that with my long i to make /spI/. My last sound is /k/ since remember, the e is silent. So now I have /spI/ + /k/, /spIk/ spike, like I found a spike in my tire after it popped! Okay now, let’s see if y’all can do the same thing with these other words. [Show words one at a time. Give them about 10 seconds to think about it. Then, ask everyone to say what they think it is. Correct as necessary]

6. Say: You’ve done a great job and reading words with our new spelling for /I/: i_e. Now we are going to read a book called The Nice Mice. This is a story about a two mice named Mike and Spike who really want to go on a trip so they can go biking and eat good food. The problem is they don’t have any money! How are mice going to make some money to go on a trip? We’ll have to read to find out. Pair up with the person beside you and y’all can take turns reading a page. [Teacher is walking around room and giving help or correction when needed] Now, let’s read it together to see how y’all did! [Call on volunteers to read each page and talk before you turn to keep kids engaged. Quick talk after finishing the reading to check for comprehension]

7. Say: Now that we have learned how to spell and write words with our long i and magical silent e and practiced together, I want y’all to do some practice on your own. On this worksheet that I am going to pass out, there’s some words that have our short i and some words that have our long i. You have to think carefully about which sound you hear and spell it accordingly. Color the pictures of the ones that have our long i sound in them.[Pass out worksheets to each student and use them to evaluate their understanding of the material.]

Resources:

Murray, Geri. “Oh, I Didn’t Know!” https://murraba.wixsite.com/readinglessons/beginning-reading

Decodable Book: https://www.readinga-z.com/book.php?id=4294&langId=1

Phonics worksheet: http://www.free-phonics-worksheets.com/phonics-worksheet-38.html

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