Lesson 1: Letter exploration (developing phonological and orthographical knowledge)

Links to the Victorian Curriculum – English

Writing, language: Phonics and word knowledge

Level 3: 

  • Understand how to use letter-sound relationships and less common letter combinations to spell words (VCELA263)

Level 4: 

  • Understand to use phonic generalisations to identify and write words with more complex letter combinations (VCELA294)

Links to the Victorian Curriculum – English as an Additional Language (EAL)

Pathway B

Reading and viewing

Level BL:

Level B1:

  • Identify common syllables and patterns within words (VCEALL288)

Level B2:

  • Apply knowledge of letter–sound relationships to read new words with some support (VCEALL368)

Level B3:

  • Apply knowledge of letter–sound relationships to deduce the pronunciation of new words (VCEALL447)

Writing

Level BL:

  • Spell a number of high-frequency words accurately (VCEALL237)

Level B1:

  • Spell accurately common words encountered in the classroom (VCEALL318)

Level B2:

  • Spell frequently used words with common patterns with increased accuracy (VCEALL398)

Level B3:

  • Spell most words accurately, drawing on a range of strategies but with some invented spelling still evident (VCEALL477)

Theory/practice connections

In this lesson, students are encouraged to further explore and develop personal generalisations about letter-sound relationships. They also need to learn that certain combinations of letters representing sounds occur in predictable positions in words. For example, the /k/ sound is not represented by ck at the beginning of a word (Snowball & Bolton, 1999, p. 79).

This is helpful when students attempt to spell unfamiliar words in their own writing.

Learning Intentions

We are learning that one letter can represent many sounds in English.

We are learning that the position of letters in words can affect the sound they make.

Success Criteria

I can make generalisations about different sounds that are represented by the same letter.

I can predict what sounds certain letters will make by their position in a word.

Role of the writer

Text encoder – representing different sounds with the same letter.

Group Size 

Whole class, or small group (4-6 students).

Lesson Sequence

  1. Reread the picture book aloud to students for pleasure.
  2. Choose a page of text and draw students’ attention to all the words in the text that contain the letter 'O'. List these words on separate cards and display on a board. For example:
    • Victoria
    • off
    • some
    • mongrel
    • bothering
    • shooed
    • horrible
    • over
  3. Slowly say each word and ask students to listen for the sound that is represented by the letter o. Teacher guides students to sort words into groups, where the letter o makes the same sound. Groups would look as follows:
    • /o/, off, bothering, horrible
    • /u/, some. mongrel
    • /oh/, over
    • /or/, Victoria
    When doing this, it is better to exclude words where the o forms part of a spelling pattern, as in oo and explain to students that in these cases the sound the letter o makes is strongly influenced by the letters around it.
  4. Ask students to add other words to these groups if known, for example, hot, son, show, thorax.
  5. Encourage students to think of other ways to group words, for example, the position of the letter 'O' in the word (beginning, middle, end), high frequency words.
  6. Ask students what they have learned about the letter o. Write these generalisations on a chart. For example:
    • The letter 'O' can represent 4 different sounds.
    • The letter 'O' represents the /u/ sound in the middle of words.
    While these generalisations may be inaccurate, they can be changed and rewritten as students read and discover more about letter-sound relationships.
  7. Teacher can continue reading the text and add other words containing the letter o to the relevant group.
  8. Students can complete word sort activities with other sets of words found in other texts.

Differentiation

The teacher can provide closed categories for word sorts, for example, telling students to sort words according to letter position in a word or number of syllables, or allow for open word sorts where students are encouraged to use groupings of their own.