EL Support Lesson
Blending Words
Put the sounds together in words like “hat,” “car,” and “dog”! The Blending Words lesson plan is a great resource for kindergarteners and first graders who are developing phonological awareness and learning about blending syllables. Specifically highlighting common consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) pattern words, this activity challenges students to blend individual letter sounds in sight words. First, they will segment out the letter sounds, and then they will blend them all together! This lesson also recommends using a toy car as a helpful teaching aid.
Objectives
Academic
Students will be able to segment and blend common high frequency words.
Language
Students will be able to blend the segmented parts of grade level words using written and visual supports.
Introduction
(2 minutes)
- Write the letters for the word hat on the board in a triangle shape, with the letter A at the top.
- Display the toy car and ask your students to name what it is (car). Have students turn and share with a partner how a car moves (e.g., fast, slow).
- Explain that today you are going to learn how to read new words by "driving" over them with your car.
Building academic language
Word
(5 minutes)- Display the visual Vocabulary Cards and provide student-friendly definitions for the new words, in both English and L1 (home language) as you are able.
- Have the students think about some words that they hear or see often (e.g., mom, dad, go, stop) and record these on the board for reference.
- Explain that you are going to demonstrate how to segment a word into the individual letter sounds and then blend it together again, using your car!
- Take your car and place it on the letter H on the board. Model how to say the letter sound /hhh/. Then, "drive" to the letter A and repeat, /aaa/. Finally, end with the letter T sound, /ttt/.
- Repeat this process a second time, this time driving faster and modeling how to blend the sounds together into the word "hat."
Sentence
(10 minutes)- Write up a new CVC word on the board (e.g., sun, rat) in the same format as the word hat.
- Ask students to say the letter sound slowly as you drive over each letter.
- Repeat this process, this time driving faster until the students have blended the segmented word into the complete word.
- Model creating a sentence aloud using one of the CVC words. Next, encourage students to do a Think-Pair-Share with a partner, orally sharing a sentence or two that includes one of the CVC words they practiced.
- Practice driving over additional words as a group for further practice.
- Pair students up and pass out a toy car and segmented word (using the pre-written index cards) to each pair.
- Have students practice driving slowly and then faster over the letters to practice reading their words.
- If time allows, have pairs trade word cards with another pair for additional practice.
Additional EL adaptations
Beginning
- Provide students with an illustrated alphabet chart to support their letter sound correspondance.
Advanced
- Have students practice segmenting longer and/or more complicated words, such as "chomp" and "went."
Formative Assessment of Academic Language
(5 minutes)- Pass out the Put it Together worksheets for students to complete independently.
- As students work, informally assess their ability to segment and blend words by listening to their progress and asking them to share aloud.
- Collect student worksheets to assess if they were able to blend each word.
Review and closing
(3 minutes)- Close by having one or two students come up and demonstrate how to segment and blend a new CVC word written on the board, using the toy car.
- Encourage students to share how they feel about blending new words after this lesson, using the sentence starter, "I feel _____."
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