Do Sheep See Sheep When They Feel The Need To Sleep?
E-mail: Carrie Sluder
Children must know how to decode different correspondences in order to become increasingly fluent readers. They will learn the correspondence ee = /E/ through listening and recognizing the correspondences in speech, recognizing a correspondence in a text, and decoding in order to become more fluent readers.
Primary paper & pencils
Chalkboard sized primary paper
At least 3 sheets of chart paper
One displaying the tongue twister őDo sheep see sheep when they feel the need to sleep?‚
Classroom set of the book Pete‚s Sheep from starfall.com
Explain Why: Knowing certain skills or őtricks‚ can help children read otherwise difficult words. Teaching children these steps will improve their reading fluency. Write the letters ee on the chalkboard sized primary paper. Explain that some sounds can be spelled in different ways and today „We are going to learn that ee says /E/ and we‚ll practice using this new skill to read new and challenging words.š
Review: „Raise your hand if you remember learning ő/e/ I can‚t hear you?‚ Remember what we called this mouth movement? That‚s right a short e. Tell them that you are going to read them a list of words and you would like them to raise their hand when they hear /e/ in a word. Slowly read them the words: bed, hip, spent, cap, sad, egg, and fled. „Super job, we heard the /e/ in bed, said, spent, and egg.
Explain How: „Now we are going to learn about the long /E/ sound. A long /E/ says its name. Today we‚re going to learn the ee = /E/ correspondence. When e and e are side by side they say /E/. It sounds like someone screaming.š Demonstrate the action by going EEEEHHH while holding both hands up to your cheeks and making a scared face. „We‚ll call this our long /E/ scream.š „Let‚s practice. On the count of three I want everyone to practice making our scared screaming face and going EEEEHHH. One∑Two∑Three∑EEEEHHH!!!!! Great, let‚s practice one more time.š
Model: „Let‚s look at our chart, on it I have written a tongue twister. Listen carefully as I read it to you. Do sheep see sheep when they feel the need to sleep? Now let‚s read it together. Great! This time I want everyone to stretch out the /E/ sound that you hear in some of the words. Do sh-e-e-e-e-p s-e-e-e-e other sh-e-e-e-e-p when they f-e-e-e-e-l the n-e-e-e-e-d to sl-e-e-e-e-p?
Simple Practice: „Can everyone think of some words that have double e‚s that go /E/? On your own paper I want you to list as many of these words as you can. When we are done we‚ll share our words and I‚ll write them on the board.š Give them ample time to create their lists. When they are finished share and discuss the words and write them on the board by taking volunteers and selecting students to help you spell the words correctly. „Great thinking, we have tree, breed, need, seed, and feet. Someone has treat written down. Although it‚s a really great word and does have the long /E/ sound it‚s spelled t-r-e-a-t, and today we are focusing only on words that have the ee = /E/ correspondence.š
Whole Text: „Since we already discussed sheep I thought we could read a story with sheep in it. We‚re going to read Pete‚s Sheep. Let‚s look at the cover, someone tell me the word that has our EEEEHHH (make the screaming action.) That‚s correct, sheep has two e‚s right next to each other and they are making the long /E/ sound. Let‚s read our story silently but make sure you pay close attention to all the ee‚s that go /E/. Now we‚re going to read to each other. Get your reading partner for the week and take turns reading to each other. While your partner is reading follow along in your book to make sure they are hitting all the /E/‚s. I also have another challenge. While your partner is reading listen and follow along carefully to count the number of times our ee = /E/ is used in Pete‚s Sheep. We‚ll share our answers when we are finished reading (there are eleven occurrences of the ee = /E/ correspondence.)
Assessment: Conclude that the ee = /E/ correspondence is used eleven different times in the book. Ask them to re-read Pete‚s Sheep and write down on their own paper all the words they find that contain the ee = /E/ correspondence. Tell them that their goal is to find all eleven words. Tell them that they may have to write down the same word more than once to get all eleven. This assessment will demonstrate the student‚s ability to recognize words containing the long /E/ correspondence ee = /E/. They should not be solely assessed on the number of words found but on whether or not they found each different occurrence of the correspondence ee = /E/