The Yawning O

Beginning Reading Lesson Design

Katherine Moss

Rationale: This lesson teaches students about the short vowel correspondence o=/o/. In order to be able to read, children must learn to recognize the spellings that map word pronunciations. In this lesson students will learn to recognize, spell, and read words containing the short vowel o. Students will learn a meaningful representation (a yawning angel). Students will spell and read words containing this spelling in a letterbox lesson. Lastly, students will read a decodable book that focuses on the correspondence o=/o/, and then complete a worksheet to check their progress.

Materials:

• Image of yawning angel
• Cover-up critter
• Letterboxes
• Letter manipulatives: d, e, h, i, m, o, p, r, s, t
• Index cards with words on them: cot, mop, red, stomp, him, drop
• Decodable book “Doc in the Fog”
• Short o worksheet

Procedures:

1. Say: “Today in class we are going to learn about the short o sound. Short o is a special sound because it actually sounds like /ah/. When you say the short o sound, think of an angel yawning making the ‘ahhh’ sound. *shows image of yawning angel*
2. Say: “Before we learn about spelling /o/, we need to first hear the way it sounds in a few words. When I hear short o sound /ah/, I pretend to yawn like this *place hand over mouth and yawn saying /ah/*. Now your turn! *allow students to demonstrate* Good job! There is a short o in the word hop. Can you say the word hop? *Allow students to answer* Did you notice and feel your mouth open like you were yawning? Watch me. *Say hop dramatizing the o and pretending to yawn*. I felt my mouth open into a yawn when I said the o in hop. Now let’s try and see if we yawn when we say the word code. *say code normally* Did my mouth open like a yawn? No, it did not. Code has a long O sound, which is different from the yawning short o. Now it’s your turn! If you hear the yawning /o/ then stretch your arms big and yawn, but if you don’t hear the yawning o just say “no!”. Ok, let’s try it. Do you hear the yawning o in lot, hen, toe, stop, pen?” *watch and make sure students make the yawning motion when they say lot and stop*
3. Say: “What if I want to spell the word stop? As in, ‘We came to a stop at the red light’. To stop means to slow down in this sentence. Before we are able to spell stop in the letterboxes, we need to count the number of phonemes. To do this, let’s stretch the word out and count them: ssss-ttt-ooo-ppp. That means we need four boxes. Where did you hear o? *Allow students to answer, scaffold if needed*. That’s right, we hear /o/ after the /s/ and /t/. So the /o/ will go in the third box, the /s/ will go in the first box, and the /t/ will go in the second box. *Place letter tiles o, s, and t in the second, first, and third letterboxes* What sound do you hear next? Let’s say the word slowly, ssss-ttt-ooo-ppp. So, you hear the /p/ there at the end.” *Place the letter tile p in the fourth letterbox.*
4. Say: “Now, I am going to have you spell some words in letterboxes for practice. Let’s start with an easy one: ‘hot’ The stove was hot. *Observe progress, scaffold if needed* Let’s try some more words.” *Allow students to spell remaining words by having one student at a time come up and model spelling the word with letterboxes, providing sentences for each word: cot, mop, red, stomp, him, drop*
5. Say: “You guys all did a great job using letterboxes to spell those words! Now, you are going to read the words you’ve spelled. When I show the card, read the word that you see back to me.” *Have students read each word: cot, mop, red, stomp, him, drop*
6. Say: “Good job! Now we are going to read a book called Doc in the Fog. Doc is a wizard who likes to play around with his magic. Will he have too much fun and get into trouble? Let’s read the story to find out! *pair students up* Make sure to take turns reading alternate pages.” *Walk around the classroom and observe and monitor students’ progress as they read*
7. Say: “That was a really fun book, did you all enjoy it? *pause while students answer* For our last activity today we are going to practice our yawning o words one more time with this worksheet. You are going to cut out all the words and their pictures. Glue the words with yawning o to one side, and then glue the words without the yawning o to the other side.” *distribute worksheet and collect when they are finished to evaluate the students progress*

References:

Decodable book: Cushman, S., & Briles, P. (1990). Doc in the fog. Dominguez, CA: Educational Insights.

Additional resources: Abby Watson “A Long Long Yawn” https://abbywatson120.wixsite.com/lessondesigns/beginning-reading

Worksheet: https://www.superteacherworksheets.com/phonics-long-short-o/short-o-picture-sort.pdf?up=1568886165

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