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TITLE	ABSTRACT	GRADE	DATE
Between the Lions: Exploring Short-Vowel Sounds	Not only is "Between the Lions" an exciting, educational television program by PBS, it also has a captivating website with a variety of activities that students will enjoy. This lesson provides examples of how the "Between the Lions" website can be used by a first-grade class studying short-vowel sounds.	K-2	6/26/07
Bingo! Using Environmental Print to Practice Reading	This lesson assumes that students have some practice reading and writing environmental print and encourages them to use the things they have learned to create Bingo cards and play environmental print Bingo.	K-2	2/25/09
Click, Clack, Moo: Reading Word Family Words	The Caldecott-winner Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin provides practice with and a purpose for learning word identification strategies. Using the notes from Farmer Brown and the animals as shared readings, first-grade students learn word families and how to decode new words in a word family.	K-2	10/15/09
Dr. Seuss’s Sound Words: Playing with Phonics and Spelling	Boom! Br-r-ring! Cluck! Moo!—you are bound to find exciting sounds everywhere. Whether you visit online sites that play sounds or take a sound hike, ask your students to notice the sounds they hear then write their own poems, using sound words, based on Dr. Seuss's Mr. Brown Can MOO! Can You?	K-2	2/19/09
From Stop Signs to the Golden Arches: Environmental Print	Teachers have long surrounded young students with a print-rich environment within the classroom, but the purpose of this lesson is to bring the print-rich environment of the community into the classroom through the use of environmental print, enabling emergent readers to delight in the realization that they are indeed readers.	K-2	9/24/07
Growing Readers and Writers with Help from Mother Goose	Children can learn rhythm and rhyme from nursery rhymes. But those same poems can be used to help young students make connections to letters, sounds, and word chunks. Let Mother Goose help children grow as readers and writers!	K-2	7/13/07
Hey Diddle, Diddle! Generating Rhymes for Analogy-Based Phonics Instruction	First-grade teachers can use analogy-based phonics (i.e., learning words based on word families) before other phonological skills, such as rhyme, are in place. This lesson focuses on an informal assessment of students' identification of rhyme in the context of a poem and manipulation of online picture cards.	K-2	4/25/08
I Know That Word! Teaching Reading With Environmental Print	Signs and labels provide even the youngest students with reading opportunities. In this lesson, students practice reading various types of print, starting with contextualized logos and moving on to words with no color or graphics. Students are encouraged to move from whole-word identification to alphabetic decoding.	K-2	2/25/09
Learning Vocabulary Down By the Bay	Students learn high-frequency vocabulary words as they engage in singing and reading the song "Down By the Bay." Activities involve recognizing, reading, and writing the words in the song.	K-2	7/9/07
Name Talk: Exploring Letter-Sound Knowledge in the Primary Classroom	Invites primary students to share their letter/sound knowledge in a small group and gives teachers an opportunity to assess knowledge in a meaningful context. Working with name cards, students share observations about their names and the names of their classmates. Extensions are appropriate for a range of primary-aged students.	K-2	3/16/07
Phonic Generalizations in Chrysanthemum	Using the book Chrysanthemum, this lesson teaches first- and second-graders the phonic generalizations for ow, aw, and ew. Based on the strategy "Letterbox Lessons" by Murray and Lesniak, students manipulate letters to construct words. Students then apply the strategy by spelling the words, reading the words in selected nursery rhymes, and playing an online, interactive game.	K-2	12/18/08
Phonics In Context	Many phonics elements can be introduced and taught using the read-aloud framework and quality children's literature. This lesson introduces and reinforces the letter-sound relationship for the short /u/ sound within a meaningful, familiar context. The lesson can easily be adapted for other phonics elements.	K-2	4/25/08
Phonics Through Literature: Learning About the Letter M	With a balance of teacher-directed, student-initiated, and home activities, kindergarten students learn about phonics and the letter m. This lesson uses children's literature, learning centers, and activities that emphasize interactive learning across the curriculum to encourage students to "monkey around" with their knowledge of letters and sounds in a fun, whole-language environment.	K-2	4/14/08
Poetry Portfolios: Using Poetry to Teach Reading and Writing	Teach your students about sentence structure, rhyming words, sight words, vocabulary, and print concepts using a weekly poem. These important skills for reading and writing are demonstrated in a whole-to-parts approach using engaging poems, shared reading, and independent activities.	K-2	3/6/09
Stop Signs, McDonald’s, and Cheerios: Writing With Environmental Print	Purposeful instruction with high-profile text can serve as a springboard for literacy instruction. This lesson encourages early readers to look beyond the color and context clues of environmental print to identify individual letters, to read words, and to write them.	K-2	2/25/09
The Big Green Monster Teaches Phonics in Reading and Writing	This lesson incorporates a shared and paired reading of the story Go Away, Big Green Monster! by Ed Emberley to build reading fluency and word recognition skills. Students also examine onset/rime patterns by generating word families, review high-frequency vocabulary through a memory card game, and apply phonics skills during a writing activity.	K-2	4/25/08
Using Children’s Natural Curiosity to Lead to Descriptive Writing	Inspired by the book It Starts with an A, kindergarten students are invited to turn their curiosity and guesswork into a class book, complete with illustrated objects and descriptive language. Students can share this book with family members and peers before adding it to their classroom library.	K-2	12/4/05
Using Folk Tales: Vowel Influences on the Letter G	Using the folk tale genre, students are introduced to the irregular spelling pattern of hard and soft g at the beginning of words. Students use the Internet to find and categorize animal names that begin with the letter g, and they also read a story about a giant.	K-2	12/16/08
Whole-to-Parts Phonics Instruction: Teaching Letter-Sound Correspondences	In this lesson, students are exposed to whole-to-parts phonics instruction. After a story has been read to, with, and by children, the teacher assists them in analyzing spoken words by focusing on onset and rime. Students use onset-rime analogies to identify words that belong to the same word family.	K-2	12/18/08
Word Recognition Strategies Using Nursery Rhymes	This lesson uses familiar nursery rhymes to draw attention to words that end with the same letters. Kindergarten and first-grade students are encouraged to create word family lists and compare them to words in different word families.	K-2	12/18/08
Word Sorts for Beginning and Struggling Readers	This lesson uses a hands-on word sort to introduce beginning and struggling readers to short-vowel word families. In addition to learning onset and rime, students practice fluent reading and spelling of the words.	K-2	2/12/09
Word Wizards: Students Making Words	This lesson is based on an instructional strategy developed by Patricia Cunningham called "Making Words." Students in first and second grade manipulate a set of letters to construct words dictated by the teacher. Students then apply the strategy using an online, interactive game.	K-2	7/10/07