Included as part of the Letter Learning Section are some lessons titled “Letter Sound” lessons. These lessons provide further practice with the first few letters and at the same time introduce letter sounds. Students hear a sound and write the letter that corresponds with that sound. We need to support students in understanding that the letters that are written represent the sounds that they hear. This is known as the alphabetic principle. Notice this is only done for 5 lessons because we will soon be introducing Missing Letters in whole words. As teachers, we know the importance of making the sound/symbol relationship and its impact on future reading and writing. So, keep stressing it throughout both handwriting and reading.
Notice again we have “introduce,” “practice,” and “complete” for the lesson goals. Additionally, we have first script, second script and supplemental.
Worksheet Format
- Lesson overview: students learn to identify the beginning sound in orally presented words and write the letter that makes that target sound.
- Students coach on place, size, and shape.
Here is a look at a worksheet for this type of lesson. In these lessons, the children will listen to a word, identify the initial sound, and then write the letter that makes that sound from a list of letters that they’ve learned. Because of this, it is important to post the letters they have learned in some way. This year, several students were very dependent on this support.
Read through the first lesson plan to understand the process. The teacher gives a word and students record the letter that makes the beginning sound of the word. They write their letter choice on the first handwriting line beside the number. Then the teacher gives the correct answer, and if the student wrote the wrong letter, he corrects it by writing the correct letter on the line below his first choice. Coaching is done on the handwriting of the correct letter, not the letter choice. After the icons for coaching, there is a Fix It Line to correctly write the letter again, based on the coach’s feedback.
We’d like to make a side note here about the sounds the kids are making. Please listen carefully to the sounds and take a minute to correct any mistakes, such as adding a schwa sound – /tuh/. Also make sure the kids are not confusing sounds, like the unvoiced /t/ and the voiced /d/. If you haven’t listened to the Letter Sound pronunciation resource yet, you might do so now.
Once you use the supplemental script (third lesson), you will need to add words that begin with the new letters that are taught. Notice that the LS-3, 4, and 5 script pages list the letters that have been learned to that point. Be sure to include words with the new letter sounds when you do these letters. Also include former letter sounds that have been difficult for students.
So far, we have done Letter Learning and Letter Sounds. We know that students learn at varying rates, so it is vital to continue to review and practice these skills even as we move into the spelling lessons.
LS-1 I Do
Now that you have seen the I Do portion for Letter Sound lessons, watch the video below to view students acting as both writer and coach on a Letter Sound lesson.
