Emergent Literacy Guide: Drive Your Racecar With “V”

Rationale: This lesson will help children identify /v/, the phoneme represented by V.

Students will learn to recognize /v/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation (by pretending to drive a racecar while using foot to push the gas pedal), by learning the mouth movements when you are making the sound of “v” (student push down on gas pedal with foot and making the “vroom” or “v,v,v” sound as the car drives), learning a tongue twister, and learning the letter symbol V. Students will practice finding /v/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /v/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.

Beginning Reading Lesson: Icky Kitten Bit the Mitt

Rationale: This lesson teaches children about the short vowel correspondence i = /i/. 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 “i”. They will learn a meaningful representation (a kitten chewing on a baseball mitt), they will spell and read words containing this spelling in a letterbox lesson, and read a decodable book that focuses on the correspondence i = /i/.

Growing Independence and Fluency Design: Growing Independence and Fluency Lesson: Yummy in my Tummy with Fluency

Rationale: A fluent reader is able to apply effortless word recognition to their readings. This ultimately affects the reader’s speed. Fluent reading is required in order for the reader to comprehend what they are reading. This allows the reader to think about what is happening in the story rather than decoding words. Instead of focusing on decoding word by word, students can instead reflect on what they are reading. Reading fluently enables students to focus on comprehension, remember what all they have read, and make connections between earlier readings and personal experiences. To become a successful reader, one must read fluently, accurately, with expression, and consistently. Fluent reading is essential for comprehension. It is characterized by effortless word recognition. The “Yummy in my Tummy with Fluency” lesson was designed to help readers become more fluent. Fluency can be improved through repeated readings. Repeated readings help students to gain automatic, effortless reading instead of slow decoding. This lesson will teach readers how to use strategies to help them build sight words through using cover-up critters, crosschecking for meaning, repeated readings of a text, and recording progress in paired partner reading to help stay motivated to reread.

Reading to Learn

Rationale: The main goal for readers is to comprehend the information they are reading. A strategy that will help readers with comprehension is summarizing. Summarizing is a strategy readers can use when identifying and recalling the main ideas in a text. This lesson provides students with the steps of summarization and will allow students to put their knowledge of summarization into practice. This lesson teaches readers to delete trivial and redundant information and focus on the important parts of a text. Students will practice their skills on short passages while using the summarization checklist.