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Procedures:

1. Say: If we are going to become great readers, we need to be able to understand the different letters and sounds we use to make words. We already know short letter a that says /a/, like cap, and now we are going to learn about short letter e, which says /E/. What if we don’t remember what short e sounds like? That’s okay, let’s just scratch our head and shrug our shoulders and say “Ehh??” That confused sound works perfectly! That’s the sound that short e makes. 

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2. Say: When I make our confused letter e=/e/ sound, I can feel my tongue touch against my teeth in the back of my mouth. My mouth is open, and sound is coming out, but at the back I can feel my tongue.  Let’s see if we can find that confused sound in some words. Can you hear the confused /e/ in desk or rock? Can you feel your tongue touch your back teeth with the confused /e/ with chest or bird? 

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3. Model a few words and sho how to find the E with the letter boxes and tiles. Say: Now we are going to learn how to make words with the confused e in them. Let’s make the word desk. We hear the confused e in that word, right? (Eh, Eh), d-ehhh-sss-k. Let’s sound out each letter and place the letter tile on our letter boxes. /d/, that’s a D, so that goes down first, ehhh, oh that’s our confused E! Then we need ssss… that’s sneaky snake s. Then /k/, oh that would be a k! /d/ /e/ /s/ /k/ and if we put it together, we get desk! [repeat with a few other words, then have the student spell a few words, then the text versions available to read]

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4.  Say: we can do the same thing with reading words too. [write out the word mesh] When we try to read this word we start at the first letter and continue all the way through. we see an M, which says /m/, oh theres our confused E! That says /e/. and then we see an S and an H, and we know those two letters together make a /sh/ noise. When we combine all of the letter sounds together, we can read the word mesh! 

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5. Have the student practice what they have learned by reading “Red Gets Fed”.  Use book talk and say: “Red the Dog is Meg’s pet and he always loves to jump up on Meg and begs for what he wants. He’s a crazy dog who loves to jump on people on the bed, like Dad! What do you think Red wants this time?” Use the coverup critter if needed to help with scaffolding. Make sure to talk about the plot of the book before turning each page. 

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6. For assessment, give the student the CVC short E worksheet and give them a pencil. Have the student look at the pictures and use them to find the letter e in the word and write the rest of the letters to make the rest of the word. You can also cover over a few of them so that the student has to start on their own and figure out what letter they need to write to make that word (so all of them are not just given). You can also mix in a few other pictures of words with other previous correspondences, like short a. [After the student has written in the other letters, have the student go through and read each one of their created words aloud.

 

Resources: 

• Short E CVC Words Worksheet from Made By Teachers Marketplace

       https://www.madebyteachers.com/products/short-e-cvc-words-worksheet/

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• Short Vowel Sounds: Exciting E from Education.com

      https://www.education.com/lesson-plan/short-vowel-sounds-e/

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• Educational Insights Decodable Books: Red Gets Fed (1990)

    https://www.amazon.com/Red-Gets-Fed-Phonics-Readers/dp/0886798531

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• Confused Girl Picture: https://www.istockphoto.com/fr/vectoriel/enfant-avec-point-dinterrogation-vecteur-curieux-gm1171408081-324516822

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