PHONICS PART 2
Lesson Plan: Word Sort and Word Hunt – Words with ‘Long o’ Sound
OBJECTIVE: The students will discover the various vowel combinations that make the ‘long o’ sound in one-syllable words. They will apply these vowel combinations for ‘long o’ to multisyllabic words.
MATERIALS: Word cards:
coach globe toe roll blow
jolt roast broke moan doe
scold foe glow scroll bolt
stove throat wrote told grown
Additional index cards or sentence strips will be needed for students to add more words.
TEACHER BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
Every word has one or more syllables, and every syllable contains one vowel sound. Some vowel sounds are spelled with two letters. These letters form a vowel team. When a vowel team is in a word, it appears in the same syllable. For long o, some of the vowel teams are oa, oe, ow. Often in vowel teams, the first vowel is long, and the second vowel is silent. We can advise students that when they read a syllable that contains a vowel team, they should try the long sound first. If the word does not sound right, then they should try another vowel sound.
In this lesson, the students will use an open sort process to discover these vowel teams as well as other patterns for spelling the long o sound in one- and two-syllable words. In an open sort, the students group the words into categories that make sense to them based on the feature they are studying. (In a closed sort, the teacher provides the names of the categories for the sort and the students group the words based on the category titles.)
LESSON CYCLE:
1. CONNECT TO PREVIOUS LEARNING:
“We have been exploring the different types of syllables that determine whether vowel sounds are short or long vowel sounds.
Can you name some of these syllable types and explain how they work?” Students may list open, closed, and ‘vowel-consonant- silent e’ syllables.
“Yes, these are some of the most common ways to determine vowel sounds. Today we’re going to explore some other ways to make one vowel sound, the long o sound.”
PHONICS PART 2 2. OPEN WORD SORT:
Provide the following word cards for students to perform an open sort as a class. The students will group the words into categories that make sense to them based on the feature they are studying, the long o sound.
coach globe toe roll blow
jolt roast broke moan doe
scold foe glow scroll bolt
stove throat wrote told grown
• Have the students sort the words based on the spelling of the long o sound.
“We’re going to sort these words into categories based on what we notice about the spelling of the long o sound.
Let’s look at the first word, coach. What do you notice about the way the long o sound is spelled in coach? (oa makes the long o sound.) This is called a vowel team because the o and the a together make a team that makes the long o sound. The o and the a work together as a team and should never be separated.”
“Let’s look at this word, toe. How is the long o sound made in this word? (oe makes the long o sound.) This is another vowel team because, in this case, the o and the e work together as a team to make the long o sound. The o and the e should never be separated when they work together as a team to make the long o sound.”
“What else do you notice about the way the long o is spelled in these words?” Children will begin to notice other words that have the vowel teams oa and oe. As they point out these words, begin to form categories under the words coach and toe.
They may also notice that in the words blow and glow, the o and w make the long o sound. Explain, “This is another vowel team that makes the long o sound. In this case the w is acting like a vowel to make a vowel team. The o and the w should never be separated when they are working together to make the long o sound.”
Students will notice the words with only the vowel o. Group these words together to make their own category. Some students may want to put roll and scroll in a separate category because they both end with two ls. Roll and scroll may be combined with other words with only the vowel o, or they can be separated into their own category.
The sorted words will result in these categories, although the words may be in a different order within each category:
coach globe toe (roll) blow told
moan stove doe (scroll) glow scold
throat broke foe grown bolt
roast wrote jolt
(roll) (scroll)
PHONICS PART 2
• Have the students read the words aloud in each category.
• Summarize the learning.
“What have we learned about the spelling of the long o sound in these words?” Help the students formulate their thinking to reflect that there are five ways to spell the long o sound: oa, o-consonant-silent e, oe, ow, just o alone.
• Apply the pattern to multi-syllable words.
“All of these words are one-syllable words. We can also add multi-syllable words to these categories. Let’s see if we can figure out where these words belong:”
homework, railroad, rollerblade, snowball, toenail, coldest, below, total, postpone Answers:
oa – railroad
o-consonant-silent e – homework, postpone o alone – rollerblade, coldest, total, postpone ow – snowball, below
oe – toenail
3. WORD HUNT:
“Now we’re going to go on a Word Hunt. You may look in any book, magazine, article, or you can even look at displays and labels that are around the room for other words that will fit into these categories. When you find a word, print it on an index card (or sentence strip) to add to our categories. Before you write your word, be sure to check to see if the word is already on display because we do not want to repeat words. Are there any questions? What words are we hunting for? (Words with the long o sound.) Remember that you can also add words that have more than one syllable.”
• Address misconceptions.
As students search for words and add words to the categories, you may notice some students adding words such as smooth, town, wooden, outing, joyful, ointment. Have a private discussion with these students and ask them to say the word aloud. Ask,
“Does the vowel have the long o sound in the word?” (No) Explain that these are some other sounds that the vowel o makes in words, and we’ll categorize these words at another time. Do not add them to the display of long o sounds.
Some students may add words such as sometimes, everyone, and somehow. Explain that these words technically follow the spelling patterns, but they don’t have the long o sound. Remove these words from the list for this lesson to avoid confusion.
• Review words in the categories.
After all students have had the opportunity to add a few words to the categories, review the lists to make sure the words have the long o sound and are listed in the correct category. You may encounter other unusual spellings of the long o sound. You can create another category for these outliers and call the category ‘Unusual ways to spell long o’, reminding the students that many words in the English language follow the patterns, but there are always exceptions to those patterns.
PHONICS PART 2
Another pattern for spelling long o is -ough, as in although. This pattern is best taught in a word sort and word hunt that focuses on the different pronunciations for the -ough pattern. If students want to add though and although to today’s list, you can add these words to the ‘Unusual ways to spell long o’ category.
• Have students read the words aloud together.
Have the students read the words in each category aloud together. The more often children are exposed to the words by reading, analyzing, writing, and talking about the correct spellings of the words, the more likely they will remember how to pronounce the words as well as the correct spelling of the words in other contexts.
• Leave the words on display for the students to refer to when they are writing and want to know how to spell a word with long o sound.