OnTrack Reading

Preparation:

Write on the board “Main Rule: Stop each chunk after the vowel sound and say the First Vowel Sound.”

Write on the board: “First Exception: Add any marker to the chunk.”

Write on the board: “Second Exception: Add any doubled consonant to the chunk.”

Familiarize yourself with the lesson plan and the word list near the end.

Class time elapsed: 0 minutes

Review the markers by asking class what they are.

Write the markers, x, ck, tch and dg on the board

Class time elapsed: 2 minutes

Write the word hope on the board

Ask the class how to spell the word hoping.

Strike out the e in hope and next to it write the word hoping, underlining the ing and putting a plus sign above it.

Say “When adding the suffix ing to a vowel plus e word, we drop the e and add the suffix.

Review the concept that when adding a suffix like ing to an a-e, i-e, o-e, etc., word, the letter e is dropped and replaced by the suffix.

Class time elapsed: 5 minutes

Write the word hop on the board

Ask the class how to spell hopping.

Write hopp under the word hop, underlining the double-p and then add the ing.

Review the concept that we double the ending consonant of CVC (hop, tap), ccvc (slop, plan) and CCCVC (strip, split) words before adding a suffix beginning with a vowel.

Make the main point that we do this to keep words like slopping from looking like sloping or hopping from looking like hoping.

Make the further point (and this is the key point to all of this) that CVC, CCVC and CCCVC words almost alway have First Vowel Sounds for their vowel sound. Thus we double the consonants to preserve the First Vowel Sound in the new word. Otherwise, many of the results would match words with vowel plus e and you would not be able to tell the two apart.

Class time elapsed: 8 minutes

Refer to the Second Exception written on the board.

Say “Because doubled consonants were designed to preserve the First Vowel Sound in words, we add them to the chunk coming before them.

Say “And because we are always trying the First Vowel Sound in each chunk, we then know that most of the time the chunks that we’ve added the doubled consonant onto will be correctly pronounced the first time through the word.

Demonstrate the concept using the words from list below.

Write a word from the list on the board and have a student draw a vertical line after the first chunk, e.g., planner, plann er, and say the word correctly using the First Vowel Sound.

Sum up with the statement: “Both the First Exception and the Second Exception help us to know when we should stay with the First Vowel Sound in a word.”

Class time elapsed: 10 minutes

Notes to the Teacher: Regarding dropping the final e: This is only true when the suffix begins with a vowel. When adding a suffix like ly or ment we don’t drop the ending e, e.g., pave/pavement or safe/safely/safety.

Also, two situations occur where the Second Exception is not reliable and both involve the double-L. About half the time the result is reliable, but the other half it is not. One situation involves the combination all, as in mallard. Much of the time the result is actually the Third Vowel Sound, /o/, as in taller. The other situation involves the combination oll, as in dollar. Here, much of the time the result is the Second Vowel Sound, /oe/ as in roller.

Furthermore, because words like accuse, appeal and occur have an /u/ sound for the first chunk, students must be instructed to force the pronunciation of these words into the following: acc-use, app-eal and occ-ur, using First Vowel Sounds in the beginning syllable. This will not be a comfortable pronunciation for them, but that will mainly be because of the linguistic concept that verbally spoken chunks tend to naturally break after the vowel sound. One advantage to this forcing process is that chunking a word like occur as occ-ur will help them remember the doubled c for spelling purposes.

Covering the above issues: You have to decide whether to extend the lesson time to incorporate the sorts of issues raised in these teacher’s notes or to cover them in another way. One possibility is to remain aware of the issues raised here and address them as you encounter them when introducing new content-area vocabulary words by chunking them on the board. Another way is to wait until a student raises an issue and to tackle it then, since at least then you know that someone is likely to be interested in the issue. Introducing these issues during the main lesson plan risks having all the gory detail bury the main message.

Next mini-lesson: Exception 3 - “Hard to Say”

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