Ehh. . . Opening the Reading Door

Lili Lydon

Beginning Reading


Rationale: Phoneme awareness is essential to good reading. In fact, it has been proven that phoneme awareness (and letter recognition) is the best indicator of potential reading success. In this lesson, e = /e/ will be introduced. Phoneme awareness helps with decoding -- a goal of this lesson. Short vowels seem difficult at first since their actual sound contradicts the letter name, but their rules tend to be easier to follow and remember than the long vowel sounds. The teacher modeling the sound with a picture and meaningful hand gesture should make the lesson more interesting and meaningful to the students. The students will also identify phonemes in spoken words in a fun game-like scenario. The students will then do letterbox spellings and then read words with the phoneme e=/e/. They will then read a book independently focusing on the phoneme.



-Copies of Pen Pals by Shelia Cushman for the teacher and every student in the class

-Elkonin boxes for teacher and all students

-Letter tiles for all students and teacher (e, s, m, l, l, d, h, p, h, r, c, t, n)

-Overhead projector

-Primary writing paper for students

-Pencils for students

-Dry erase board and marker

-Picture of a door that is partially opened (for meaningful representation)

-Sheet of paper with Elmer Elwood led elderly elephants written on it (tongue twister)

-Worksheets with pictures of the words used in our reading and spelling portion of the lesson: sled, help, smack, shred, chest, crab, and spend. Under each picture will be four different words; the students will read the choices and circle which word the picture represents.



  1. I will start off by introducing the letter and correspondence to the class, first writing the lowercase letter e on the board. “What is the name of this letter? E, yes, very good! What are some sounds that the letter e makes? /E/, yes, very good. E also makes the sound /e/, like a creaky door.” Put the picture of the partially opened door on an overhead projector. “The /e/ sound sounds a lot like a creaky door. /e/” Say the phoneme as you act out opening a door. “OK, now everybody pretend with me that you have a creaky door you need to open, too, and say /e/ (act like you’re opening a door) with me. /e/. Very good creaky doors!”
  2. Put the tongue twister on the overhead projector. “Now we have a really long sentence with a lot of /e/ sounds in it. I’m going to read it by myself and open a creaky door whenever I use the /e/ sound. /e/lmer /e/lwood elud/e/d el/e/v/e/n /e/lderly /e/l/e/ phants.” Open your creaky door and extend the /e/ sound when reading the sentence. “OK, friends, now I want you to say it with me. Open your creaky doors and make the /e/ sound last a little bit longer whenever you use it in a sentence. /e/lmer /e/lwood elud/e/d el/e/v/e/n /e/lderly /e/l/e/phants. Very good class!” Read more slowly when reading with the class.
  3. “Now we’re going play with words. I’m going to say two words and I want you to tell me which word has the /e/ sound in it. I’ll do one first. Do I hear the /e/ sound in the word pan or pen? Let me see where I hear my creaky door sound. P/a/n. Hmm, no, I don’t hear the creaky door in the word pan. Let me try pen. P/e/n. Look, there’s my creaky door! I hear /e/ in the word pen. Now we’ll try some as a class.” Use word pairs ran or rent, send or sand, bun or bend, man or mend. “Great job, class!”
  4. Have the class get out the Elkonin boxes and letter tiles and get yours out preparing to spell on the overhead projector. “OK, class, it’s time to get out our letter boxes and our letter tiles and spell some words. I’m going to spell one first. I am going to spell the word smell, like smelling something really good.” Put up four letter boxes. “Let me see, /s/. OK, I need to put an s in the first box. /s/ /m/. OK, I need an m in the second box, sm. /e/, Oh, there’s our creaky door sound, and it goes in the third box. /l/ And now we need an l, but it the word smell we have two l’s at the end that make the same sound, so we put it in the same box. And here’s our word, smell.” Have the students spell words independently and walk around the room checking their progress. When starting a new word, tell the students how many boxes to unfold. Use the words: sled (4), help (4), smack (4), shred (4), chest (4), crab (4), and spend (5). If students have trouble, I help them by starting with the /e/ sound in each word first.
  5. “Great job, friends. Now we’re going to read words that I write on the board. I’ll do one first. Here’s my first word.” Write sled on the board. “OK, I see the /e/ creaky door sound in the middle, /e/. My first letter is s, like a snake, /s/. Then I have l, so /l/. So far, I have /sl/. Now here’s that creaky door sound! /e/. So I have /sle/. And the last letter is d, /d/. So I put it altogether and have s-l-e-d. Sled, like a sled you play with in the snow. Now I’ll write down some words and I want you to read them as I point to them.” Write down the words you used for the letterboxes. If the students seem to have trouble, sound each phoneme out individually.
  6. Now it’s time to introduce our book, Pen Pals. Pen Pals is about a little boy named Ben who is stuck in his play pen without his friend Ted, the cat. He is very sad. I want you to read Pen Pals to see if Ben is able to play with Ted the cat.” The students will be in groups of two and will alternate reading pages. I’ll walk around observing the students’ progress.
  7. Next we’ll write a message about a pet at home or a pet we wish we had (in case a student doesn’t have a pet). Make sure the children have their primary paper and pencils and let them write independently at their desks about their pet.
  8. Assessment: For an assessment, I’ll have worksheets with pictures of the words we used during the lesson. The students can write down which picture represents which word was used in the lesson. There will be four choices the students can read and they will circle the word that the picture represents.




Mallory Cadrette. Eeeehhhh? I Can’t Hear You!!!


Bruce Murray. 4, 5, 6 phoneme count words            

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