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Uhhhh What?? 

Beginning Reading Lessons by Angel Fuentes 

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Rationale:

The point of this lessons is to teach children the short vowel sound /u/ and its correspondence to the letter U. For children to read, they need to understand spellings and pronunciations. In this lesson students will learn how to pronounce /u/ and recognize words that contain the letter U. Students will learn this through the phrase, “Uhhhhhh, what?” to help emphasize the /u/ sound as well as spell and read words that contain the letter U in a letterbox lessons and decode a book that focuses on/u/

 

Materials:

Pictures of people with their hands in the air confused saying /u/, cover up critter, whiteboard for modeling, letter tiles for each child, letterbox sets for each child, magnetic letters for the teacher: e, f, l, m, n, t, u, list of spelling words on a poster for students to read with pictures: bit, chunk, nut, put, bat, buzz, rug, put, decodable text: A Bump in the Mud, assessment worksheet, scissors, glue, pencils

 

Procedures:

  1. Say: “for us to become great readers we have to learn the secret code that tells us how to say words. Does anyone in here like secret codes? I definitely do! Today we are going to learn about the short U. When I say /u/ I think about being confused about something because I am not sure about it. When that happens we tend to drag out the /u/ sound because we are confused. I will use the picture of the confused people to show the sound /u/

  2. Say: “before we learn about the spelling of /u/ we need to listen and the /u/ in different words. When we say /u/ our mouths are open and our tongues sit at the very bottom of our mouths and we make the sound from the back of our throats. I'll show you first: fun. I heard the /u/ sounding confused and I felt my mouth open and my tongue go flat on the bottom of my mouth. There is a short u in the word fun. Now let's see if we can hear the short u in the word cute. Uh-oh, there isn’t a short u sound in the word cute did you guys hear it? If you hear the /u/ sound in the next few words I want you to put your hands in the air and shrug your shoulders pretending you are confused. Do you hear the /u/ in duck or stick? Fun or play? Buck or dog? Truck or car? What about chuck or throw?

  3. “Now how about we start using our secret code to learn how to read! Let's learn a new spell word that have the confused /u/ sound that we are learning about. What if we want to spell the word drum? First, I need to know how many phonemes I have in the word tug so I stretch it out and count /d/ /r/ /u/ /m/. I need four boxes. I heard the confused sound so I am going to put my u in the third box. The word starts with /d/ so I need to place d  in the first box, /r/ goes in the second box before the /u/, in the last box is where /m/ will go! Now lets all read the word together, /d/ /r/ /u/ /m/, drum!

  4. Say” “Now I am going to have you spell some words in your letterboxes. You’ll start out with two boxes. The ball was hit up in the air; up. What should I put in the first box? What about the second box? I’ll check your spelling when I walk around before we move on. For the next word we will need three letterboxes. Listen for the beginning sound that will go in the first box and then listen for the /u/ sound. I tuck when I do a front flip; tuck. (Check student spelling and have them spell words like plant, plum, igloo, truck, box, scum, mess, and fluff)

  5. Say” “Now I am going to let you read the words you have spelled, but first I’ll show you how I like to read a tough word. (Display the poster-board with /u/ words) This is how I would know how to read the word with the letterboxes. I start by covering up all the letters except the /u/ in the middle. We learned today that /u/ makes the confused person sound and it makes me want to shrug my shoulders. Everyone act like you are confused with me! Next I know that the word starts with the letter P which makes the /p/ sound. After the /u/ sound I see the letter m which makes the /m/ sound. So now I have /p/ /u/ /m/. Finally I add the last /p/ sound which gives me the word pump! (show words from the poster-board and have the children read the words together. Afterwards call on students to have them read the words one at a time until everyone has had a chance to read a word)

  6. Say: “Since everyone has done such a great job at reading all the words with our new /u/ spelling, now we are going to read a book called Bud the Sub. Bud is a submarine who loves to travel underneath the water. Gus, his boss, takes care of him and takes him places by moving his switches to help him travel under the water. One day, a tugboat runs into a really big glacier and Bud has to rush to help the people on the boat. Do Bud and Gus make in time to save everyone? Let's read our book and find out! (Have students break off into pairs and take turn reading different pages out of the book and walk around the room to monitor their progress, after everyone finishes reading on their own, reread the book aloud all together)

  7. Assessment: Say: “On this worksheet there are rows of words that you will need to read aloud. Using what we learned today I want you to find and circle the words with the /u/ sound. There are pictures with each part of the worksheet too so use those pictures as a guide to help you choose what word best fits to describe the picture. Then after you circle each word, write it out for practice. (Collect worksheets in order to assess progress)

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Resources:

Jacquelyn Johnson: Uhhh, I’m confused!

https://sites.google.com/site/jjreadinglesson/home/uhhh-i-m-confused

 

Assessment worksheet:

Circle and Write Worksheet:

https://www.themeasuredmom.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/ShrtuWk.pdf

 

A Bump in the Mud, 2019. Lad and His Pals, Bruce and Geri Murray. 

https://murraba.wixsite.com/geniebooks

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