Childhood/Early Childhood Education Department

Student Teaching Thematic Unit Plan and Assessment Assignment

Name: Tara Fort

Dates of Implementation: 2/22 – 3/5

Host School:

Grade Level: Kindergarten

Title: Rhyming with Word Families – short /a/ sound.

Overview of the Unit:

This unit focuses on rhyming word families. Each week students will learn a new word family while also
reviewing the word families they learned previously. They will also learn different skills to distinguish a
rhyme. Each learning activity is designed to introduce and practice these skills and rhyming families in an
engaging way. Each lesson is 10 minutes long done 4x in small groups of 3 to 5. Learning experiences
include: creating crafts, reading books, playing games, and completing worksheets that all focus on a
different short /a/ vowel sound word family.

1. Preasssessment: -at / -an / -ad, worksheet assessed with rubric

2. Rhyme Cream Cones (ad) family: craft, assessed by work sample
3. /ad/ Roll and Write: game, assessed by observational notes & work sample
4. /am/ Color & Read: Worksheet and reading passage: assessed by work sample
5. / at / an / ad / am Work Family Houses: craft, assessed by work sample
6. /am/ Identifying Rhymes: listening experience, assessed by observational notes
7. /am/ Whiteboard Write: writing experience, assessed by observational notes
8. Post Assessment: -at / -an/ -ad / -am, worksheet assessed with rubric

Skills taught:

Bouncing the rhyme:

This is a skill to distinguish between the end sound/word family of a word. They take two words, one on
each hand, and bounce the end sound: “cat-at-at” and “man-an-an”. They can do this to help distinguish
between rhymes and isolate rimes.

Isolating the onset, chunking the rime:

Students already know how to isolate individual phonemes, and while we will practice this as well, they
will also learn how to isolate the beginning phoneme and chunk the end sound. Rather than “c-a-t” they
will say “c-at”. This is important in teaching word families and noticing patterns.

Rationale for the Unit:

The overall theme of my unit is phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is “the understanding that
spoken words are made up of individual sounds, which are called phonemes… able to isolate sounds,
manipulate sounds, blend, and segment sounds into spoken and written words (Heggerty, i).” There is a
variety of content that falls under this overarching theme such as decoding, segmenting, blending, and
beginning phonics. Students are learning to isolate rimes and blend them with onsets to allow for an early
literacy decoding tool. Students are also learning how to determine and distinguish between rhymes to
broaden their scope of decoding.

Research shows, "the best predictor of reading difficulty in kindergarten or first grade is the inability to
segment words and syllables into constituent sound units (phonemic awareness)" (Lyon, 1995). Knowing
word families will allow the students to read a word they do not know that falls under that same word
family, this is especially helpful for students who have difficulty reading, which many of my students are
below the targeted reading level. This is important because “PA [phonemic awareness] helped all types of
children improve their reading, including normally developing readers… disabled readers…
kindergarteners… and children learning to read in English as well as other languages (Heggerty, ix).”
This is pertinent with my class, because they are all emergent readers, many of which are either atypically
developing readers or at the very basic foundational level. We do not have any ENL students, but we do
have a few students who are Indigenous Americans and thus may speak a different language at home.

My lessons are short and succinct, this is purposeful. It has been found that “[phonemic awareness]
instruction does not need to consume long periods of time. Acquiring [phonemic awareness skills] is a
means rather than an end (Heggerty, ix).” Each lesson focuses on a word family, practicing the skills of
segmenting and blending onset and rimes—it could be considered intensive. Instead of creating whole
lessons that combine multiple skills and content areas, instead these lessons focus specifically on
developing the skills they will need. We also focus on identifying and distinguishing rimes, first in the
context of rhyming and then as individual word families. Students will learn to identify word families but
words that do not fall within the word family, and they will know that not only do they not rhyme, but
they do not sound the same as words with different rimes. These are two different skills, the ability to
identify and distinguish, which will help students when reading and writing. Research shows, "reading
and phonemic awareness are mutually reinforcing: Phonemic awareness is necessary for reading, and
reading, in turn, improves phonemic awareness still further" (Shaywitz, 2003). This comes from the
Heggerty curriculum the Lafayette School District’s K-1 classes are using. In Grimshaw, specifically in
Kindergarten, Heggerty and phonemic awareness is taught as a standalone part of their day outside of
ELA because it is a remedial and intensive program. All of my lessons are aligned to follow this
curriculum and the NYS Standards.

Using CVC words is important in improving grapheme-phoneme correspondences, or the ability to isolate
individual sounds and match it to the written letter. This is a skill that Kindergarteners are still mastering,
and thus using words outside of these consonant-vowel-consonant words would be in their frustration
level and would do more harm than good in their reading confidence and development.

Finally, my lessons all include some sort of hands-on component, whether it be coloring, cutting and
pasting, highlighting, a hand motion/mnemonic. This is to ensure that all learning styles are being
accommodated. Additionally, my lowest group will be provided amended activities to make the activities
more accessible for them, while other groups are focusing on segmenting and blending they will be
focusing on the first letter grapheme/phoneme identification and the skill of identifying rhyme. They will
do the same activities just with different targets.

Differentiation:

Each lesson in my unit is differentiated to meet the individual needs of each group (they are grouped by
level/need). For the low group, they will receive modified assignments that will make them more
accessible. The assessments are also differentiated because each page is leveled. For example, the rhyme
cream cone activity is modified for the low group, so they are only focusing on producing the onset of
CVC words and not the entire word.
Goals of the Unit:

- Students will recognize, produce, distinguish, organize, and assess rhymes / word families.
- Students will have a better grasp of phonemic awareness.
- Students will learn skills to decode familiar and unfamiliar words.
- Students will learn the skills of chunking and bouncing rhymes.
- Students will develop confidence when decoding familiar words.

Standards included:

- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF,K.2a:
Recognize and produce rhyming words.

- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.2b:
Count, pronounce, blend, and segment syllables in spoken words.

- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.2C
Blend and segment onsets and rimes of single syllable spoken words.

- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.2d: Isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel, and final sounds
(phoneme) in the three-phoneme (consonant-vowel-consonant, or CVC) words.

- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.2e:
Add or substitute individual sounds (phonemes) in simple, one-syllable words to make new words.

Objective/Desired Student Outcome/Guiding or Essential Questions of the Entire Unit:

Objectives throughout the unit (with Bloom’s in parentheses):

- I can identify words that rhyme. (Knowledge)

- I can distinguish words that do not rhyme. (Understand)
- I can assess and categorize groups of words. (Analyze & Evaluate)
- I can produce words. (Apply & Create)
- I can segment and blend onsets and rimes in single syllable words.
- I can add or substitute individual sounds to make new words.

Guiding or essential questions of the unit:

- “Does ___ rhyme with ____?”
- “Why do they rhyme? How can you tell?”
- “Can you find the last two letters of the word? What are they?”
- “Why don’t they rhyme?”
- “What rhymes with ___?”

Assessments and Evaluations of the Entire Unit:

1. Preasssessment: -at / -an / -ad, worksheet assessed with rubric. This worksheet is self-explanatory.
Explain the directions and guide them through the first question, but do not give them the answers. If they
don’t know what a picture is, you can clarify that for them. Start with the first worksheet and let them
work at their own individual pace. When they complete the first worksheet they can then move on to the
second as long as you explain the directions to them.
2. Rhyme Cream Cones (ad) family: craft, assessed by work sample

Students will complete a craft in which they are given a piece of construction paper with three different
word families written on a cone. They are then tasked with creating the ice cream scoops for each word
family, coming up with words on their own with as little support as possible. They must do three scoops
for each cone, but can do more if time allows. Students who are in need of more support will be provided
scoops with the word family already written on it—they are instead focusing on determining the
beginning sound.

3. /ad/ Roll and Write: game, assessed by observational notes & work sample

Throughout the roll and write game, teacher will observe their progress as they play. Next to the student’s
name the teacher will write the word they struggled with and any additional notes. Additional notes can
be strategies they used to figure it out, if the teacher had to help them, or if they simply skipped it. This
way we will know what words to focus on in the following lesson. They will do this consistently
throughout the game.

4. /am/ Color & Read: coloring sheet and reading passage: assessed by work samples

Student work samples should have all am words colored in on the first page and at least one am word
written at the bottom. On the second page, they should have highlighted every am word and circled every
sight word.

5. / at / an / ad / am Work Family Houses: craft, assessed by work sample

Work sample is self-explanatory: they should have the same word family words underneath the roof of
that word family with no errors. Mark down errors on sticky note.

6. /am/ Identifying Rhymes: listening experience, assessed by observational notes

On a sticky note, make note of students that are actively participating and words the entire group misses.

7. /am/ Whiteboard Write: writing experience, assessed by observational notes

Make notes of words the students struggle with, specifically what students, in the same observational
sheet used in lesson 3.

8. Post Assessment: -at / -an/ -ad / -am, worksheet assessed with rubric

Same assessments and rubric as the preassessment.

Resources for the Unit:

Students will primarily use pencils, crayons, scissors, glue, and any papers I provide them. I will use the
same resources, plus construction paper, a copy machine, and my computer to create the resources.

Citations used throughout unit:

Foorman, B. R., Francis, D. J., Shaywitz, S. E., Shaywitz, B. A., & Fletcher, J. M.
 (1997). The case for early reading intervention. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Heggerty, M., & VanHekken, A. (2020). Phonemic awareness: The skills that they need to help them
succeed! (kindergarten version): A 35 week curriculum of daily phonemic awareness lesson plans
developed on a systematic scope and sequence of skills with explicit modeling (Kindergarten
Curriculum). River Forest, IL: Literacy Resources.
Lyon, G. R. (1995). Toward a definition of dyslexia. Annals of Dyslexia, 45, 3-27.