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K–12 teaching and learning · from the UNC School of Education

Teaching phonological awareness to LD students

This lesson is designed to help students understand the part/whole word relationships at the sentence level. It enables students to relate the 44 phonemes of the English language to words in print (reading) better. Although this lesson is written based on first-grade goals and objectives, it is designed for second-grade students who are not reading at a first-grade level. This lesson should be taught only with a small group.

A lesson plan for grade 1 English Language Arts

By Cynthia Bumgarner

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Learning outcomes

The student will be able to segment a series of letters into words. Then the student will segment the words into phonemic units.

Teacher planning

Time required for lesson

30 Minutes

Materials/resources

  • 12-inch pre-printed sentence strips
  • Multi-colored blocks or plastic counters
  • Scissors
  • Glue
  • 1st grade writing paper
  • Pencils
  • Crayons
  • Dolch word list

Pre-activities

  • Brief gross motor warm-up exercises (stretching, jumping in place, or jumping jacks)
  • Brief fine motor warm-up exercises (finger stretches and wiggling, pressing palms against desks etc.)
  • Simon Says (using clapping, movement and oral counting directions)
  • Brief left to right visual tracking exercise

Activities

  1. The students need to be seated together at a table with sentence strips and blocks or counters.
  2. Each student should be asked to identify the letters printed on his/her sentence strip.
  3. Students should count the number of letters and place the corresponding number of counters or blocks beneath the sentence strip.
  4. The teacher should ask the students to see if they can identify any words in the series of letters (ex. 1st series of letters-theballisred).
  5. The teacher should write any identified words on the board or on chart paper.
  6. Students should draw lines on their sentence strips to divide the series of letters into words. The students should then cut the sentence strips into words.
  7. Students should place a block or counter under each word.
  8. Ask students, “Are there more letters or more words?”
  9. The teacher should then pronounce each word and ask the students to determine the number of sounds in each word. The correct number of counters should be placed under each word.
  10. The teacher should then write the words on the board, drawing a circle around each phoneme in the word, writing the correct number of phonemes under each word.
  11. The students should then cut the words apart and then cut the words into the correct number of phonemes. The students should then glue the letters on the writing paper back into the original sentence format.
  12. The students should copy the sentence directly under the pasted words. The students should then illustrate the written sentence.

Assessment

The students should be given 2 to 3 sentences similar to the sentence used in the activity and be asked to determine the correct number of phonemes in each word.

North Carolina curriculum alignment

English Language Arts (2004)

Grade 1

  • Goal 1: The learner will develop and apply enabling strategies and skills to read and write.
    • Objective 1.02: Demonstrate decoding and word recognition strategies and skills:
      • generate the sounds from all the letters and appropriate letter patterns which should include consonant blends and long and short vowel patterns.
      • use phonics knowledge of sound-letter relationships to decode regular one-syllable words when reading words and text.
      • recognize many high frequency and/or common irregularly spelled words in text (e.g., have said, where, two).
      • read compound words and contractions.
      • read inflectional forms (e.g., -s, -ed, -ing) and root words (e.g., looks, looked, looking).
      • read appropriate word families.
  • Goal 2: The learner will develop and apply strategies and skills to comprehend text that is read, heard, and viewed.
    • Objective 2.04: Use preparation strategies to anticipate vocabulary of a text and to connect prior knowledge and experiences to a new text.

  • Common Core State Standards

    • English Language Arts (2010)

      • Reading: Foundational Skills

        • Grade 1
          • 1.RFS.1 Demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print. 1.RFS.1.1 Recognize the distinguishing features of a sentence (e.g., first word, capitalization, ending punctuation).
          • 1.RFS.2 Demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes). 1.RFS.2.1 Distinguish long from short vowel sounds in spoken single-syllable words. 1.RFS.2.2 Orally produce single-syllable words by blending sounds (phonemes), including...