Ready-to-teach lesson
Use Print Features to Read Fluently
When Louis Armstrong Taught Me Scat - Grade 3 - Short lesson
TIME
OBJECTIVE
15 minutes Use the way a word is printed to decide how to say it out loud.
PRODUCT
Rows of the printed words with a note beside each one for how to say it Essential question: How does a page tell you to say a word nobody has ever said to you?
Materials
Text to mark
- The book, on a screen the whole class can see
- Passage 5 - the girl awake, a trumpet's shadow across the wall
- • One page copied
- • Passage 8 - the girl unwrapping gum while Louis plays
- large
- Prepared passages: Passage 5, Passage 8, Passage 9
Lesson sequence
1 Listen first - 4 min
- Passage 9 - the girl chewing hard, cheeks full
- Focus:
- The print, heard as an instruction
- Teacher model:
- Read the page aloud flat, then the way the print looks, and ask which was right.
- Prepared text:
- Passage 9 2 Loud, quiet, long - 8 min
- Teacher direction:
- Sort this page's lines into loud, quiet and long, and note what in the print decided it.
- Expected answer:
- Loud: the big bold capitals. Quiet: the small light words. Long: strech-itee, whose letters have gaps.
- Prepared text:
- Passage 8 3 Whose voice - 3 min
- Focus:
- Print used to tell two speakers apart
- Teacher direction:
- Ask who is speaking in the biggest capitals in the book.
- Prepared text:
- Passage 5
Support & extension
Above: Print a scat word two ways so a partner reads it loud once and quiet once, and say what you changed.
Below: Point at the biggest word on a page and the smallest, and read each one the way it looks.
Assessment
- Uses size or weight to explain a choice about volume
- Notices letters spread apart or repeated and reads them long
page 1
- Reads the same word two ways when it is printed two ways
page 1
page 2