Crying Baby Says "Aaaa"

Beginning Reading 

Katie Stuart

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rationale:

In order for students to learn how to read, they must first learn vowel correspondences. Short vowels are often the hardest for children to learn, so we will start at the beginning with the short vowel correspondence a= /a/. In this lesson, children will learn to recognize, spell, and read words with the short a vowel correspondence. They will learn a meaningful representation, learn and spell words within the Letterbox Lesson, and read a decodable book that focuses on the correspondence a= /a/.

 

Materials:

Graphic image of baby crying, ; cover-up critter; whiteboard or smartboard Elkonin boxes for modeling and individual Elkonin boxes for each student; letter manipulatives for each student and magnetic or smartboard letters for teacher: a, t, n, d, c, p, b, g, f, s, l, h, r, s, m; list of spelling words on poster or whiteboard to read off: at, bad, cap, ham, pack, spat, flag, smash, stand; decodable text Nat the Cat; and assessment worksheet.

 

Procedures:

1. Say: “In order to become expert readers, we must first learn the code that tells us how to pronounce words. Today we are going to be learning about the short vowel A and the sound that it makes. Every time you see an /a/ in a word, you will make the sound of a crying baby. Now I want everyone to make the sound of a crying baby, aaaaa! When I say /a/ I think of a crying baby” (Show graphic image of crying baby.)

2. Say: “Before we learn about the spellings of /a/, we need to listen for it in some words. When I listen for /a/ in words, my jaw drops down with my tongue to the bottom of my mouth (make a vocal gesture for /a/.) I’ll show you first: mat. I heard a say its name and I felt my jaw drop and my tongue go down. So yes, there is a short /a/ in mat. Now I’m going to see if kit has the /a/ sound. Hmm, I didn’t hear /a/ say its name and my jaw didn’t drop. Now you try. If you hear /a/ say “I hear the crying baby.” If you don’t hear /a/ say, “That’s not it.” Is it in bad, train, flag, pot, stand?”

3. Say: “Now let’s look at the spelling of /a/ that we’ll learn today. What if I want to spell the word glad? “I am glad to play outside.” Glad is a positive emotion we feel. To spell glad with our letterboxes, I need to know how many phonemes are in the word so I stretch it out and count: /g/ /l/ /a/ /d/. I need four boxes. I heard that /a/ just before the /d/ so I am going to put the letter in the third box. The word starts with /g/ that’s easy; I need an g. Now it gets a little tricky so I am going to say it slowly, /g/ /l/ /a/ /d/. I think I heard /l/ so I’ll put an l right after the g. I have one letter left. Let’s listen one more time, /g/ /l/ /a/ /d/. I will put a d in the last box for /d/. Now all of our letterboxes are filled.”

4. Say: “Now I’m going to have you spell some words in letterboxes. You’ll start out easy with two boxes for at. Like, “I was at home this morning.” What should go in the first box? (Respond to student’s answers.) What goes I the second box? I’ll check your spelling while I walk around the room. (Observe progress.) You’ll need three letterboxes for the next word. Listen for the beginning sounds that goes in the first box. Then listen for /a/. Here’s the word: bad, “I was bad when I hit my sister; bad. (Allow students to spell remaining words while giving them sentences for each of the words: cap, ham, pack, spat, flag, smash, stand.)”

5. Say: “Now I am going to let you read the words you’ve spelled. I'll model how to read one of these words. Look at our list, I see that this word starts with the letter b followed by an a. We know that a=/a/ like a crying baby aaaa so we have b aaa. Now our last letter is d so if we put those sounds together we have baaaad, bad, the word is bad. Now you read the rest of the words on the list.” (Show the words at, bad, cap, ham, spat, flag, brag, stand, and the pseudoword bamp. Have the students read the words in unison. Afterwards, call on individuals to read on word on the list until everyone has had a turn.)

6. Say: “You have done a great job with our new vowel. Now we are going to read a book called, Nat the Cat by Cindy Garrett. Nat is a black cat. She is so glad she has milk. She sips and sips on the milk until, oh no! There is only one drop left! Let’s keep reading to find out what Nat the Cat does. Pair up and read the rest of the book with your partner.” (Students pair up and take turns reading alternate pages while teacher walks around the room monitoring progress. After each group is finished reading, the class rereads Nat the Cat aloud together, and stops between page turns to discuss the story.)

7. Say: “Before we finish up with our lesson about one way to spell a= /a/, I want to color all of the words that you hear the /a/ sound in. I will help you get started. Do we hear /a/ in top? No, we do not, so we do not color in the word ten. Do we hear /a/ in fan? Yes, we do, so we are going to color in the word fan. Finish the rest of the words and I will collect the sheets after everyone is done.” (Collect worksheets to evaluate individual students progress in mastering the a= /a/ correspondence.)

8. Say: "Before we finish up with our new lesson, I want you to solve a reading problem. On this worksheet, there are two words for each picture. Your job is to pick the correct /a/ word to match the picture." [Collect worksheets to evaluate individual student progress.]

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Resources

• Assessment worksheet

• Garrett, Cindy: Nat the Cat 

• Reference: Clemons, Michaela, “The Crying Baby Says a” https://michaelaerinc.wixsite.com/mysite-3/beginning-reading

• Murray, Bruce. (2012). Making Sight Words.

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