Ouch That Hurt!

By: Catherine Wiley

Rationale: This lesson teaches children about the long vowel correspondence ou=/ow/. In order to be able to read, children must learn to recognize the spellings that map word pronunciations. In this lesson children will learn to recognize, spell, and read words containing the spelling ou. They will learn a meaningful representation (little boy saying Ouch!), they will spell and read words containing this spelling in a Letterbox lesson, and read a decodable book that focuses on the correspondence ou=/ow/.

Materials: Graphic image of a hurt little boy; cover up critter; whiteboard or smartboard; Letter boxes for modeling and individual Letter boxes for each student; letter manipulatives for each child and magnetic or smartboard letters for each teacher: a, n, s, h, o, u, t, c, r, l, d, f; list of spelling words on poster or whiteboard to read: out, shout, ouch, sour, loud, flour, hour, around; decodable text: The Clown Who Lost Her Smile (link below), and assessment text (see below)

Procedures:

1. Say: In order to become expert readers we need to learn the code that tells us how to pronounce words. We have already learned to read short vowel words with o, like mop, and today we are going to learn about ou and the /ow/ sound that it makes. When I say /ow/ I think of a little boy saying, “Ouch! That hurt!” (show graphic image).

2. Say: Before we learn about the spelling of /ow/, we need to listen for it in some words. When I listen for /ow/ in words, I hear o start the sound and my lips slowly close in to where I am puckering my lips and end making a wa sound. [Make vocal gesture for /ow/]. I’ll show you first: out. I heard the o start the word and felt my lips make a little o [make a circle motion around pursed lips], and then felt my lips open up to make the wa sound. There is our /ow/ in out. Now I’m going to see if it’s in tool. I didn’t hear the o and the wa sound at the end. Now you try. If you hear /ow/ say, “Ouch! That hurt!” If you don’t hear /ow/ say, “That’s not it.” Is it in out, pair, shout, ouch, lazy, sour, loud, stare, flour? [Have children make a big O followed by a smaller O with their mouth when they feel /ow/ say its name.]

3. Say: Now let’s look at the spelling of /ow/ that we’ll learn today. One way to spell /ow/ is with the letter o and a signal w at the end of the word to tell me to say ow’s name. [Write ou on the board.] What if I want to spell the word shout? “I let out a shout when I forgot my homework.” Shout means to yell in this sentence. To spell shout in letterboxes, first I need to know how many phonemes I have in the word so I stretch it out and count /sh/ /ou/ /t/. I need 3 boxes. I heard that /ow/ just before the /t/ so I’m going to put the ou in the second box. The word starts with a /sh/ sound, that’s easy; I need an s and a h. Now it gets a little tricky so I’m going to say it slowly, /sh/ /ou/ /t/. I think I heard /t/ at the end so I’ll put the t right after our ou.

4. Say: Now I’m going to have you spell some words in letterboxes. You’ll start out easy with two boxes for out. Out means that something is outside of something else. “The clown popped out of the box with joy!” What should go in the first box? [Respond to children’s answers]. What goes in 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 sound that goes in the first box. Then listen for the /ow/. Here’s the word: sour, I love to eat sour candy; sour. [Allow children to spell words.] Time to check your work. Watch how I spell it in my letterboxes on the board s – o – u – r and see if you’ve spelled it the same way. Try another with three boxes: loud; The crowd was very loud when they cheered at the game. [Have volunteer spell it in the letterbox on the front board for children to check their work. Repeat this step for each new word.] Now let’s try 4 phonemes: flour; The baker used a lot of flour to make his cake. One more then we’re done with spelling, and this time you need five boxes: around; She ran around the park. Remember to stretch it out to get this tough word.

5. Say: Now I am going to let you read the words you’ve spelled, but first I’ll show you how I would read a tough word. [Display poster with shout on the top and model reading the word.] First I see our o and our u combined together; that’s my signal that the vowel will say its name. I’m going to use the cover-up to get the first part. [Uncover and blend sequentially before the vowel, then blend with the vowel.] /s/ /h/ = /sh/. Now I’m going to blend that with /ow/ = /show/. Now all I need is the end, /t/ = /showt/. Shout; that’s it. Now it’s your turn, everyone together. [Have children read words in unison. Afterwards, call on individuals to read one word on the list until everyone has had a turn.]

6. Say: You’ve done a great job reading words with out new spelling for /ow/: ou. Now we are going to read a book called The Clown Who Lost Her Smile. This is a story of a sweet little clown who lives in a big kingdom. This sweet clown lost her smile and cannot find it anywhere. The whole kingdom looks in all kinds of silly places to find the smile. Let’s pair up and take turns reading The Clown Who Lost Her Smile to find out if the people in the kingdom find the clown’s smile. [Children pair up and take turns reading alternate pages each while teacher walks around the room monitoring progress. After individual paired reading, the class rereads The Clown Who Lost Her Smile aloud together, and stops between page turns to discuss the plot.]

7. Say: That was a fun story. Where did they find the clown’s smile? Exactly, the smile had to come from within the clown’s own happiness inside of her! How did they bring her smile out? Right, the silly mouse that made her laugh. Before we finish up with out lesson about one way to spell /ow/ = ou, I want to see how you can solve a reading problem. On this worksheet, we have some words missing. Your job is to look in the box of word choices, and decide which ou word fits best to make sense of the pictures on the worksheet. First try reading all the words in the box, then choose the word that fits best in the space relating the picture. Reread your answers to see if they make sense. [Collect worksheets to evaluate individual child progress.]

Resources:

Ryan, Cheryl, The Clown Who Lost Her Smile: https://www.readinga-z.com/projectable/book.php?id=371&lang=1&type=book

Assessment Worksheet: https://www.education.com/download/worksheet/67373/vowel-diphthongs-ou.pdf