Language Arts Lesson Essay

Allyssa Satin Capucilli’s Biscuit and the Nest (2008) which is part of the Biscuit Phonics Fun series will be used in this lesson to teach Language Arts to Grade 1 level students. This lesson aims to meet the Sunshine State Standards which are to make students: (1) identify the sounds of vowels in printed words; (2) apply letter-sound knowledge to decode phonetically regular words quickly and accurately in isolation and in context; (3) retell the main events and identify the characters and setting in a story; (4) edit for correct use of common spelling patterns and conventional spelling of high frequency words and for correct use of capital letters for the pronoun I and proper nouns; and (5) communicate effectively when relating experiences or retelling stories heard or read. After the teacher reads aloud the story to the class, the students will perform the succeeding activities. First, students will be paired off and each pair will complete a story frame which goes this way. The story takes place in ________. A character in the story is ________who ________Another character in the story is ________who ________. A problem occurs when ________. After that, ________and ________. The problem is solved when ________. The story ends with ________. Second, the students will complete a Word Sort. They will get and divide a sheet of paper into two columns. At the top of the first column, they write â€Å"vowel sound /e/† and at the second column, â€Å"not vowel sound /e/†. Then, students select words from the story and write these in the columns. Third, students will accomplish a Picture Match. They are to read the words below the picture and tell whether it is a pen or a pin, mien or men, leg or league, nit or net, rid or red, tin or ten, etc. Fourth, students will describe their pet or a pet they would like to have (if they do not have one yet) in writing. They need to write 3 to 5 sentences. Lastly, they will individually narrate to the class a story of their own pet or someone else’s pet. The students will be assessed through the following assessment tools: (1) Students’ writing development will be assessed through their use of capitalization and use of appropriate punctuation marks in their written output in the first and fourth activity. (2) Students’ grammar skills are evaluated when they are able to correctly write the correct setting, character, or event in the story frame and when they properly use subject-verb agreement in their descriptions in the fourth activity as well as in their stories in the last activity. (3) Students’ spelling skills will be assessed through a written spelling assessment to be given after the second and third activity. The teacher will read aloud ten words with the short vowel sound /e/ and ask the students to write them on a piece of paper. Another way to assess their spelling skills is through their written stories in the fourth activity. The spelling pattern that the students will be taught in relation to the story is the short vowel sound /e/. Word examples of the short vowel sound /e/ are egg, fell, nest, get, help, etc. Throughout the activities, the students will use three cueing systems in order to arrive at comprehension. These cueing systems are semantic, syntactic and graphophonic systems. The semantic system refers to language features that bring about meanings to the reader. This is used in the classroom to make students know and understand the correct meaning of a word. The syntactic system includes the interrelationship of the words in a sentence and the sentences in a text. When students are able to complete the story frame activity, they use the syntactic system. The graphophonic system includes the spelling and sound structure of the language and the relationship of these two. This will be taught to the students by demonstrating how words are pronounced based on their spelling or word patterns. References Capucilli, A. S. & Schories, P. (2008). I Can Read! Phonics: Biscuit and the Nest. New York: Harper Collins. Florida Center for Instructional Technology. (2009). Florida K-12 Reading and Language Arts Standards. Retrieved April 10, 2009, from http://etc. usf. edu/flstandards/la/new-pdfs/elp-1. pdf.