This is a guest post by Lyssa Sahadevan of Marietta, GA. She writes a blog called My Mommy Reads which is about motherhood and teaching-related topics.
R-controlled vowels, also known as “bossy r” words start appearing early in leveled texts. While we often spend much time on CVC (consonant/vowel/consonant) words at those early levels, we can always introduce the “bossy r” sounds.
After watching the clip, we write the words from the video to start our word lists for each sound. We then find them in our
Joy Cowley Early Bird
books and we practice building them with letter cards. This can be done with the whole group or small groups over several days
.
From there, we work on sorting the words into categories. I am including one of our sorts available for download below! I laminate the cards, cut them out and have the students (during small group) sort the cards and record the words. I then have students highlight the "bossy r" as they read the word list to a partner. It is quick, meaningful, and reinforces the sound.
While all students will not be ready for mastery of these sounds, some will be and I know the exposure will benefit everyone!
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For more information on the books used in this blog click the series highlights image on the left below. To download the Bossy R Word Sort Packet, click the image to the right.
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