Instructional Demontration: /ee/ and /ea/

Emergent

Context: Shared read-aloud of The Bad Seed by Jory John to a first-grade class.

SOL: 1.6 The student will apply phonetic principles to read and spell. A) Use beginning and
ending consonants to decode and spell single-syllable words. E) Blend beginning, middle, and
ending sounds to recognize and read words. F). Use word patterns to decode unfamiliar words.

Instructional Scenario: Upon finishing the read-aloud, students are directed to page 30 where
bad seed begins to explain that “[he] feel[s] bad, sometimes, I also feel kind of good… All I can
do is keep trying and keep thinking,...I’m not such a bad seed after all…” Special attention is
given to the long e sound in each of the words “feel”, “keep,” and “seed.” The teacher asks,
“what do all these words have in common?” “They all have 2 e’s!” “Great job, yes! What sound
does ee make in each of these words?” Most students are puzzled because they have not been
taught this. The teacher draws three lines and asks the class, “what is the first sound you hear
in “feel”? “/f/!” Teacher writes the “f” on the first line/ “Ok, now what is the LAST sound you hear
in ''feel”? “/l/!” The teacher writes the letter “l” in the third line. “Ok, what sound is missing? Let’s
go back to the first sound. (pointing to the letter “f”) /f/, (pointing to the blank line) /ee/, (pointing
to the letter “l”) /l/. “/ee/!” “Yes! The sound /ee/ is missing. The sound /ee/ is represented by two
“e” ’s in the middle of the word. In the word, “feel”, the letter “e” is saying its name. We call that
the long e sound. This instruction is repeated for the words “keep” and “seed”.

Language Components:
● Phonetics (phonological awareness) is addressed by identifying and isolating the
phonemes.
● Orthography is addressed by teaching that /oo/ can be spelled with “oo”.

Possible Follow-Up: The next week students are introduced to their new story “If you Plant a
Seed” by Kadir Nelson. Students quickly notice that their new story has a word with two e’s and
remember that when two e’s are present in the middle of the word, it makes the long sound /ee/.

Beginner

Context: Weekly sight word introduction with the whole class. Students are on day 3 where they
hear, say, and spell check their spelling attempt.

SOL: 2.5 The student will use phonetic strategies when reading and spelling. B) Use knowledge
of short, long, and r-controlled vowel patterns to decode and spell words.

Instructional Scenario: Students are at their seats with their whiteboards out. The teacher is,
once again, saying the weekly sight words, but today students are tasked with spelling the sight
words based on what they hear. After some healthy struggle, the teacher asks how many
sounds the students hear in the word “sleep”. Some students say 3 but most say 4. The teacher
tells the class that she will start by writing 3 lines (that will serve as elkonin boxes) to represent 3
sounds, but that she will add another if needed. The teacher then asks what the first sound they
hear is. The consensus is “/s/”, so the teacher writes a letter “s” in the first blank. She then asks
what is the second sound, and again, the class agrees that it is an /l/ and the teacher fills the
second blank with an “l”. When asked what the third sound is, students say /ee/ but when asked
what that looks like some students say “ee”, others say “ea”, and a few say “e”. Here the teacher
re-writes “s” and “l” twice, and a blank line for the third sound, one beneath the other, and writes
“ee” on the first example, “ea” for the second example, and “e” for the third example. The
teacher then asks the class to remind her what word they were spelling. The class says, “sleep!”
The teacher asks, “do we have another sound after /ee/”? The class says yes and all say it is a
/p/. The teacher proceeds to draw another blank and writes “p” in all three examples. “Ok, our
sight word is ‘sleep’ and here we have three different spelling options. What sound is the vowel
making in the word ‘sleep’?” “/ee/!” “That’s true and look at this word here *pointing to “slep”, this
says “slep”. Is the vowel long or short here?” “short!” “Yes, so this could not be the spelling we
need. Now we have ‘sleep’ and ‘sleap’, both these vowels could make the long vowel sound.
Are you ready to see the REAL spelling?” The teacher erases the example “sleap”. “The correct
spelling is “sleep”. Sometimes we may have more than one option that sounds right and in that
case we need to see what LOOKS right by trying out different spellings.”

Language Components:
● Phonetics (phonological awareness) is addressed by identifying and isolating the
phonemes.
● Orthography is addressed by teaching that /ee/ can be spelled with “ee” and “ea”.
● Semantics is addressed by providing the meaning of each sight word when introduced. .

Possible Follow Up: Students play fly swatter sight words during small groups and students
are able to identify the word “sleep”.

Instructional

Context: Word sort 16 introduction with short e and long e words.

SOL: 3.3 The student will apply word-analysis skills when reading. A) Use knowledge of regular
and irregular vowel patterns.
3.4 The student will expand vocabulary when reading. E) Discuss meanings of words and
develop vocabulary by listening and reading a variety of texts.

Instructional Scenario: In small group instruction, students are introduced to their weekly word
sort, short e and long e. The teacher reads the list of words with students repeating after her.
Students are asked what they notice in the way the words sound or look. Students brainstorm
and some say “there are a lot of e’s”, others say, “some words have one “e” and other words
have two e’s”. The teacher then prompts the students to cut the sort and “examine” the words
carefully and categorize them in any pattern they notice (open sort). Once students are finishing
up cutting and sorting, the teachers draws the group’s attention to a student’s way of sorting.
The teacher reads the words in the first group aloud and asks the students what they noticed.
What they noticed is the words in the first group were sorted with the long “ee” sound. The
teacher thanks the student and points out that she has an idea why this student sorted these
words in that way, but wants to know what the rest of the group thinks. One student says the
words in the first group “e” saying its name. Another student points out that all those words have
two “e”s. Through this open dialogue, students are drawing their own conclusions as the teacher
guides and leads as appropriate. The teacher follows the pattern with the other two groups of
words and then the teacher guides the group in understanding what each word means. The
group will continue to sort their words daily until it is time for test day.

Language Component:
● Orthography is addressed by teaching that /ee/ can be spelled with “ee” and “ea”.
● Semantics is addressed by providing the meaning of each word in the word sort.
● Phonetics (phonological awareness) is addressed by identifying and isolating the
phoneme “ee” and “ea”..
Possible follow-up: Later that week, students are silently reading books they independently
choose. While reading a chosen book, students write words in their word study notebook they
come across in their reading that have the spelling patterns they learned.