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This Reading Mama

-at Family: 2nd day

By thisreadingmama Leave a Comment

First part of lesson: Resort/rematch -at words and pictures (5-7 minutes)

On the 2nd day of working on our -at family, ALuv matched the words and pictures with minimal support from me.  I asked him again how he knew when a word and picture matched, helping him to think again about his strategy.  His answer was usually, “Because this picture starts with a __ and that word also starts with a ___.”

Upon introducing these words the first day, we were more focused on the initial consonant sound in each word.  Today I wanted him to concentrate more on the -at part of the word.  Instead of telling him that all the words had -at in them I wanted him to discover it himself.

Me: “Now, look at these words.  Is there anything that’s the same about them?”

A: “They all have a t.”

Me: “Yes, that’s right.  Anything else that’s the same?”

A: “Oh, they all have a‘s!”

Me: “So, they all have an a and t.  Good discovery!  Those two letters together say /at/.  I’m going to say every word.  Listen for the /at/.”  I read each word like this “/s-at; sat/”.  “Because they all have /at/ at the end of them, they are rhyming words.”

I handed ALuv a highlighter (kids love to play with highlighters…even middle schoolers!!) and he highlighted the -at chunk in each word.

Second part of lesson: reading -at words in context (about 10 minutes)

Book title: Cat on the Mat by Brian Wildsmith, which is a “predictable book” (controlled text).  The illustrations tell a whole story within themselves.  It’s basically about a cat who sits on a mat, but doesn’t want to share it with other animals who also come and sit on the mat.

I read the book to him aloud first, not necessarily to find the -at words; just for fun.  He got a good laugh out of the illustrations and we talked about what happened in the story.

“Now, I’m going to read it again.  This time, I want to see if we can find some -at words.”  So we read it together again and found the -at words.

Then ALuv read the book with my support.  This is a picture of him reading the book.  He was very excited to read it and even read it to daddy when he got home from work. 🙂

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~Becky

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Filed Under: Learn to Read, Phonics and Word Study Tagged With: Phonics, Rhyming words, teaching reading, Word Family, word sorts, Word Study

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Hi! I’m Becky, a homeschooling mama with 4 blessings who keep me on my toes {and knees}. Before homeschooling, I was a classroom teacher (M.Ed.) and reading tutor. Read more about me here.

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