How to Teach Sight Words and Sound Spellings Using a Big Book Story

The following is one way to teach sight words and sound spellings using a big book. We are going to use the story A Moose Is Loose from the Easy-for-Me™ Children's Readers Set B, and the mini-lessons will last for a week because there are so many concepts to teach in this story!

A snapshot of the concepts taught from this story

 

Long U and OO spellings:

OO – moose, loose, scoop, troop, rooting, hoot, snoozing, roosting, soon.

EW – newspaper, flew, crew, knew, stew, new.

OE – shoes, canoe.

O – to, do.

UE – cue, blue, glue.

UI – suit, fruit, cruise.

Compound Word – Newspaper

Adding –ING – rooting, roosting, snoozing

Sight Words – By the time the children get to this story, they will have already learned and practiced all the sight words in List B, so it is a matter of reviewing and searching for the words that appear in this story.

Words included in List B:

am, ask, be, cut, got, him, into, its, let, run, us, yes, away, from, funny, may, must, of, put, say, that, them, they, went, any, fly, just, last, many, she, show, than, try, what, when, why, ate, fast, good, our, pull, saw, sing, then, too, took, who, with, about, all, eat, gave, new, read, still, take, tell, work, your

Basic Procedures

Day 1, hunt for OO and O words. You can use colored film to put over those words in the big book so they will stand out nicely when you read.Tell the children you are going to be looking for words that have the OO sound as in the word MOO! But there are different ways to spell that sound, so each day when you read the book together you will be hunting for a particular sound. When you have found the words that match that sound spelling, you will write them on the chart.

Day 2, search for EW words and even during other times of the day when you find another EW word, add it to the chart.

Day 3, add the OE words.

Day 4, add UI words.

Day 5, add UE words.

Follow-up Activities

Example page from Day 1 when you are highlighting OO spellings

After reading, talk about the plot. What would the children have done had they been the newspaper reporter who was called on to help with the animals that got loose? What solution would they have created? It would be fun for the children to WRITE an alternate solution. They can use the words in this story as references for spelling. On the following days, you would add colored film to the words that contain the sound spellings you are focusing on.

Most of all, have fun with the story and for sure, love learning!