“Uhhh” A Cavemen’s Favorite Expression
By: Maggie Barry
Rationale: In this lesson, the teacher is going to be teaching the short vowel correspondence u=/u/. The students will learn to be successful with this letter by being about to spell, read words that contain u, and recognize the letter. There will be a visual representation (caveman saying “uhh”), which will help the students recognize the sound /u/, spell words in a letterbox lesson, and then read a book practicing the letter. The goal of this lesson plan is to helps students read whole texts, practicing reading, spelling and identifying the letter u.
Materials: Image of caveman scratching his head and saying “uhhh”
Cover-up critter
Whiteboard or smart-board
Letterbox and letters for modeling to class
Letterbox for students- u,p,n,t,b,g,m,a,f,s,b,d
List of words containing /u/ and some that do not- up, on, Gus, big, dub, sub, set, boss, fast, hums, yells
Decodable book- Bud the Sub
Assessment Worksheet- Short u words
Procedures:
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Say: “How many of you want to become an expert reader? Well to do this you must learn the code to pronounce words. We already learning /a/, /e/, /i/, and /o/. We are going to learn today the short vowel /u/. /u/ as in the sound the cavemen makes “uhhh”. The vowel /u/ can be found in the words sub, when you see this word think uhh (show graphic image). Write u on the board. This is the letter u and it makes the /u/ sound. When you see it, always think uhhh, like the caveman.
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Say: We need to be able to understand the sound that the letter u makes. We will start with identifying /u/ sound in words. When we are listening for the letter u, we need to see if we are making the caveman noise. We have our mouth open and our tongue pressed down. Now I will show you how I use /u/ in words. When I say the words bug, I hear the /u/ sound. My mouth opens and my tongue is pressed down. Now I will try another one, how about the word truck. See how my mouth opens and my mouth is pressed down at the /u/ part. Ttt-rr-uuuu-ckk. What about the word trip? Hmmm I didn’t hear it in that one and my mouth didn’t open and my tongue wasn’t down. Now lets all try. If you hear /u/ do your best impression of a caveman, if you don’t hear it say “no”. Do you hear /u/ in: hot, ball, rug, leg, and hug.
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Say: Now we are going to look at words that we are going to spell today. How about we spell the word sun. “Today I want to go swim in the sun”. To spell the word sun in a letterbox lesson you would need to find how many phonemes you have in the words, /s/,/u/,/n/. This means we will need three letterboxes. The first phoneme I heard was /s/ so that would mean that s goes first. Then I heard /u/ so would put that in the second box. Lastly I heard /n/ so that would go in the third box. There are a couple words that are more challenging in letterbox lessons such as shrug. You would want to count how many phonemes. There are four in this one because the s-h makes the shhh sound like you are trying to make someone be quiet. This would be in the first box. Then you have /r/ in the second, /u/ in the third, and /g/ in the last.
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Say: Now we are going to work on you spelling some words in your letterboxes. We are going to start with just two letterboxes. Everyone spell the word up, “The balloons went up to the sky”. I am going to check everyone’s as I walk throughout the classroom. If you don’t understand please raise your hand. Next we are going to do a letterbox with three phonemes. How about the word sub. Sound it out as you put the letters down, /s/ /u/ /b/. Let the students spell the rest of the words and give the students individual help who need it (up, Gus, dub, sub, boss, and hums)
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Say: Now you are going to read all the words that you have spelled. First I will show you all how to read the words (project a picture of the word truck). Since I see the letter u in the middle I know that it makes the /u/ sound. This is when we will use our cover critter and as we read the word we are going to one by one uncover the letters so we can sound it out. We will start with t-r-uuu, then we will keep going on with our critter and see the ck. We will chunk the beginning together and then get tru- and add the ck. Then you get truck, “ my dad drives a truck”. Now everyone is going to spell out a word from the list (up, Gus, dub, sub, boss, and hums), this will show me who may need more help and show me how understands the concept.
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Say: Everyone just did such a good job on the letter /u/. We are now going to read the book Bud the Sub. This book is about a sub named Bud. The man who drives subs name is Gus and he is taking Gus out into the water. When they are at see they see a tug boat that needs help. Will Bud be able to save the tug? We are going to break off into groups of four and read the book together to see if bud saves the day. (I will walk around and listen to all students reading and then once everyone has finished the book we will all come back together. Once we are all reading we will go page-by-page to talk about what each page has said).
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Say: Before we are done with reading today we are all going to do a worksheet. I want everyone to show me how well the can find the /u/ sound in the words listed in the boxes. Only choose words that make the /u/ sound, open mouth and tongue down. Once you have done that write all the words down under it. If you finish before time is up, you may color in the ladybug. (Collect the worksheets once everyone is done to see how everyone did and to make sure all understand the vowel u).
Resources:
Assessment worksheet: Short U words
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Geri Murray, Oh, I didn’t know!
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Courtney Boyd, “Uhhh??” said Dug the caveman
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