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Iggie the Iguana’s Icky Sticky Insects

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Rationale: This lesson will teach the short vowel correspondence i = /i/ to a group of first graders. In order to learn to read students must learn how to recognize the spellings that map out word pronunciations. In this lesson, children will learn how to recognize, spell, and read words that contain the letter i . They will learn a meaningful representation (trying to get the icky sticky gum off of their face while pronouncing /i/), 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/.

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Materials:

1. Photo of a man with “icky sticky gum” all over his face for visual representation

2. White board and dry erase marker

3. Letterboxes that fold out to 6 boxes (one for each child)

4. Letter manipulatives for spelling i  words ( b, c, d, f,  h, i, k, l, n, p, s, t, t,  w, z)

5. Decodable Text: Liz is Six (enough for each pair of 2)

6. Assessment worksheet

7. Pencil and Primary Paper

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Procedures:

        1. Teacher introduces the lesson by saying: “Okay friends, today we are going to work on a new short vowel sound! That short vowel is going to be short i ! Look at this picture here, isn’t this a funny picture?” (Shows picture of gum on face) “This is a picture of a man who has just gotten icky sticky gum allllll over his face! So to remember the /i/ sound, we are going to pretend that we are picking icky sticky gum off of our faces and we are going to say /i/ while we do it.” (Demonstrate) “Now you try! As you are doing it look around at your friends and see what their mouths look like as they say /i/. Now let’s practice our short i  in a sentence! Im going to say a tongue tickler, I want you to listen first, then we will say it together and then you will say it on your own! ‘Iggie the Iguana is interested in Icky Sticky Insects’, did you hear our short i ? Now say it with me (says it together), and now say it on your own. (let them practice saying it to a partner)

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        2. “Before we learn about spelling words with /i/ in them, we need to learn how to identify words that have that sound. We can do this by using the icky sticky /i/ sound that we now know how to make, and use that to see if it is in other words. For example, if I read the word MAT do I hear the /i/ sound? /M/- /A/- /T/. No, I don’t! Do I hear it in MIT? /M/- /I/- /T/, YES! The short I  is in MIT! Now you try, do you hear /i/ in BOP? What about MAP? FIT? RIP? FLOP?” (wait for answer after each word and tell them if they are right or wrong.) 

 

        3. “Now let’s work on spelling words with the short i.  We are going to do our spelling with letterboxes today! I’ll go first. So if we have the word Stick. Like “The dog fetched the stick”. Let’s count the phonemes, or the number of different sounds, that we hear in Stick. /s//t//i//k/, that’s 4 phonemes, so I need have 4 letterboxes laid out (draw 4 boxes on white board). Now I need to say the word Stick  out loud and listen to every sound that I hear, as I do that I am going to pick the letters that go in the boxes. So in Stick  I hear /S/, that’s S, so I’ll put an S  in the first box. /S/-/T/-ick, I hear a T  next, so I’ll put a T  in the next box. /S/-/t/-/i/-ck, that’s our icky sticky /i/, so I’ll put an I  in the next box. /S/-/t/-/i/-/k/, so I hear the /k/ sound which we usually think is just K, but in Stick, the /k/ is made by ck, because they are buddies and when they get put together they make the /k/ sound too!! So let’s look at what we have:  There it is! Stick, all spelled out!”

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                                          s       t        i       ck

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        4. “Now I am going to get you to practice spelling out words using your letterboxes. We’ll start out with an easy word, Bit. Like “The dog bit the mailman”. We’ll do this one together. So lets listen to how many different phonemes we have in Bit, /b//i//t/. So we need 3 boxes (draws three boxes on board), now fold your letterboxes out until you only have 3. Now lets say the word together ‘/b//i//t/’. So the first sound we hear is /b/, what letter makes the /b/ sound class? (take answers and correct if wrong and if right praise them). B makes the /b/ sound, that’s right! So lets all find our B and put it in the very first box. Now, what’s next ‘/b//i//t/’, theres our icky sticky /i/! What letter did we say makes the /i/ sound? That’s right, i ! Let’s put an i  in our next box, and lastly, we have ‘/b//i//t/’, we hear /t/ very last. What makes the /t/ sound? (listen for answers) T  makes the /t/ sound, so where are we going to put that? In the last box, very good! So what do we have now?” (Look at board and point out that you have a letterbox with B-I-T, in it). “Okay very good class! We are going to do a few on our own now, I am going to say a word and tell you how many letterboxes it needs and you are going to spell it with your letter tiles. This word is going to have 3 letterboxes, and it’s a funny word that you have never heard because its not a real word, but try to spell it anyways: ZIK”. (give time to spell the word). “Okay time to check, lets go through it and see if you do it the same as me: I have in my letterboxes ‘z-i-k’. Now try another with 3 letterboxes: SHIN. This one is going to have a buddy pair like we talked about earlier so look for which two letters might be buddies!” (Give time, then repeat checking together like the last word). “Next word, this one has 4 letterboxes: GIFT, ‘I gave my mom a gift’.” (Give time and then check together). “One last word, this one is 5 letterboxes, but I know you can do it: TWIST.” (Give time and check). “Great spelling class, you guys caught on so quick!”

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        5. “Now I am going to let you read the words that you just spelled, but first I will show you how I read a word that I am not sure of.” (Write STICK on the board and model reading it out loud.) “First I see that we have my icky sticky i in this word, so I know that its going to say /i/. I am going to use my cover up critter to break this word down into parts. (Uncover each letter and blend with previous letters before moving on.) /s//t/ = /st/ + /i/ = /sti/. Now I am looking at two letters, C and K that both make the same sound, but Oh! I remember that when C and K are put together they are buddies, and that means they make one sound, /K/ so that’s my last sound. Now I’ll put it all together: /sti/ + /k/ = /stik/. Stick, that’s right! Now you all get to try, all of you together.” (Have the children read each word that they spelled in unison. Then allow students to volunteer coming to the board and using the cover up to read a word.)

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        6. “You guys have done such a great job spelling and reading words with our short i. Now we are going to read a book called Liz is Six. This book is about a little girl that just turned Six, and she is going to get some silly things for her birthday, we need to see what she gets! Let’s pair up and read this story to each other.” (Children will get in groups of two and read the book taking turns reading alternate pages while I walk around the room and monitor their progress. After they read it in pairs, we will read it as a class together.)

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        7. “What a fun birthday Liz had! Before we finish up our lesson, we are going to get out our pencils and write a message. Since we just learned about Liz’s birthday, I want you to write about something fun that you have gotten for your birthday.” (Give out primary paper and pencils). “Great job class, now we are going to do a fun worksheet! This worksheet is going to let you practice recognizing pictures and seeing if they have a short i sound, reading words with short i, and writing words with short i .” (Pass out worksheet and collect when they are done. Use worksheet to assess who did and did not completely grasp the lesson to determine who to do extra practice with.)

 

Resources:

       - Liz is Six, Canvas: https://auburn.instructure.com/courses/1071716/pages/educational-insight-decodable-books

       - Murray, G. Oh, I didn’t know!: file:///Users/mcparker96/Downloads/BeginningReadingSample.pdf

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       - Robertson, P. Iggy the Silly, Icky, Iguana: https://plr0012.wixsite.com/ms-robertson/beginning-reading

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       - Assessment Worksheet: https://www.myteachingstation.com/short-i-sound-worksheet