Word Work Center- Blended R sound

As a follow up to my fluency video on “The Day the Crayons Quit” I’ve created a word work center around blended r sounds, for example…crayon or dragon.  I came to this decision because according to, the Phonics Skills Sequence 2nd grade and the book What Research has to Say About Reading Instruction by PM Cunningham and JW Cunningham understanding blends is an essential phonetic skill that all students need to master in order to become fluent readers. 

Furthermore, the lesson helps students vocabulary grow because they are beginning to see a patterns develop with the various blends.  The text contains numerous blends but if you focused on the "purple crayon" "beige crayon" and "green crayon" the students should find the following words in the text: crayon, grapes, dragons, crazy, proud, brown, green, crocodile, trees, frogs, problems, congratulate, orange,  and driving.  In addition to these words students will sort the following words at the end of the lesson: brain, drum, draft, crown, drink, craft, crow, crab, brave, broom, brag, and drain.  These last twelve words are pre-selected by the teacher and serves as either tier one or tier two words. For example we (as teachers) can start showing students how the word drain, may mean to empty a bowl or may mean being physically tired.  This book is also an excellent book for increasing a students overall vocabulary with words such as: gorgeous, congratulate, humpback whale, embarrassed, and brilliantly.     

I’ve selected this book because I feel it is of high interest to students. This is a level R book for third graders.  As previously stated in my last post,  we know it is a level R book because when we compare it to the book Neighborhood Mystery by Ray Ramos from the website www.readinga-z.com we see several similarities including words per page, use of illustrations, and vocabulary level/literary devices.  Neighborhood Mystery has about 80 words per page on average, this is the same as The Day the Crayons Quit.  Furthermore both text use illustrations that are described in the writing but are not essential to understand the plot of the story. By which I mean, pictures alone would not be enough to understand what is happening in the text. The student would need to read to understand.  Both texts also use italics, bold words, and a variety of punctuation marks in the text.  Finally both text use a variety of words that would improve a students vocabulary, for example in The Day the Crayons Quit there are words such as - gorgeous, Humpback Whale,  and brilliantly; whereas  Neighborhood Mystery uses words such as - accidently, violinist, symphony, and eerie.  When you compare these two text, one which (Neighborhood Mystery) we know is leveled R we can see that they are both of similar levels.


The following activity would be for small group instruction after having modeled the text for students by reading it during whole group instruction. 

The activity would be ideal for small group instruction because it involves students reading, speaking, listening, and writing. It would work in a large group setting but I feel it would be less effective.

This lesson would meet the following standards:

·         1.1.K.B: Employ word recognition techniques:

o   Use association strategies to identify letters

o   Demonstrate phonological awareness through the segmenting and blending of phonemes

o   Use knowledge of letter sound correspondence (alphabetic principle) to decode words in context

·         1.1.1.B: Use word recognition techniques:

• Demonstrate phonological awareness through phoneme manipulation
• Demonstrate knowledge of letter sound correspondence (alphabetic principle) to decode and encode words

 1.1.2.B: Use knowledge of phonics and word recognition (e.g., root words, prefixes, suffixes, and syllabication) to decode and understand new words during reading

The activity would go as follows:

Objective:
To have students become familiar with and be able to locate, and produce words with common r blends.  This lesson specifically focuses on br, cr, dr blends. 

Materials:

·         The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt

·         Five pieces of plain white paper (required)

·         Extra pieces of plain white paper (preferred)

·         Markers/pens

·         Sticky notes (colorful preferred)

·         12 tiered words on notecards

·         Large note cards

Engaging activity:

·         Ask students for a quick verbal summary of the book. 

o   This is to check for understanding

Lesson:

·         On the pieces of plain paper at the top, write three of the “blended r” sounds

o   Br

o   Cr

o   Dr

·         For the last two pieces of paper write “__r” at the top

·         As you are writing the letters pronounce each sound the blend makes

·         Ask students for one or two examples they can think of for these three blends

·         If correct have the student write them underneath the blend on the paper.  if incorrect write out the incorrect word and explain to students why it does not fit the pattern: For example if a student says "car" the teacher would write down car and explain how yes it does have a "c" and a "r" but they do not blend like the word "crash". 

·         Tell students we are “hunting for r blends today” so while we re-read the story if you see one, we have to stop…and write it out on their “r traps” (aka sticky notes)

·         Begin rereading the story; after reading a page, have students write the words that have the “r blend” on sticky notes.  The students will then stick the note on the correct page. This “captures” the blends

·         As they “capture” a blend help students identify the meaning of the word using context clues from the crayons letter

·         As we read, have the students discover two other blends that are in the text

·         Have students find and capture the blend sounds using their “r traps”

·         After finishing the book have students try to add more words that weren’t in the text but that follow the pattern

Summarizing:

·         Have students repeat the different sounds for each category by correctly pronouncing two words from each category

·         Give students twelve note cards with tiered words on them

• You may want to pair up students and have one student read a word and one student place the word in the correct category.  This would prevent students from just matching letter patterns. It would also serve as an informal assessment for you as a teacher to gage your students progress.

·         Have students sort the note cards correctly

·         Have students pick out their favorite word in each category

• for this have students use words from "purple crayon" "beige crayon" and "green crayon"

·         Have them write it on a large note card.

·         Add the note card to the classroom word wall under a “blends” section.

I feel that this lesson would be engaging because students would be generating their own list and doing the work. They would take ownership of the lesson. In the interest of time, you could focus on specific pages of the text that really have these sounds. For example, the purple crayon has several of these blends. This way you could really focus the students on finding the blend instead of overwhelming them with the entire text. Furthermore, a teacher can really set the tone of excitement by playing up the “hunting” atmosphere and the “r traps” and really praising each “catch”. 

Hopefully, the students would generate more than two additional blend sounds and you can create more on the extra paper. Ideally students would recognize that their “r traps” have an r blend in their name. And this would be one of the blends they would use.

Overall, I feel that this lesson would be a very effective way of teaching blends.  It is interactive, engaging, and the lists are initially generated from the text that they are working with in whole group discussion. This connection re-enforces the importance of the text and the lesson.