When to use A or An

TC Name:  Sarah de Almeida

RICA Domain: 2 Word Analysis

RICA Competency: 3 Phonological and Phonemic Awareness

Grade Level: 2^nd

Instruction:

I observed Ms. Danielson teaching phonological and phonemic awareness with the use of vowels and consonants to help distinguish when to use a or an.  Ms. Danielson’s students know buy now what is expected of them for the morning routine.  They quietly enter the classroom, put their clipboards in the bin, sit down and take out their journals.  Ms. Danielson asks them to turn to page 12 with the title Use of A or An.  She does a quick review of the difference between a vowel and a consonant.  “What are the vowels!” she says.  The students respond with a jumbled sounding, “A,E,I,O,U!”  Ms. Danielson’s favorite response for the students to all be involved is the choral response.  She likes them to be able to wiggle and giggle and be vocal.  She doesn’t start the year with this kind of response technique she lets them earn it.  They all sing in unison a song about the consonants.*  As she is singing the song, she points to the alphabet letter line on the wall.  All of the consonants are shaped as orange fish; all of the vowels are shaped as yellow starfish.   
Todays objective she explains is the when to use a or an.  If the word before a or an is a vowel or silent h, then you put an.  If the word before a or an is a consonant, then you put a.   She models how to figure out when to use the right word.  On the doc.cam, she has a sentence that reads, “I kicked ___ ball over the fence.”  She reads it first, then they all read it together with choral reading, then she gives them wait time to come up with an answer.  She does a “pepper” type response technique to check for understanding and does not stop to correct the answers.  If she sees that there are a few mistakes, she has a student with the right answer explain how they got it.  Then she wrote another sentence on the doc.cam to continue with guided practice. 

Ms. Danielson invites the student to continue their worksheet with a partner.  After working in pairs to answer the next few questions, the students are to work on their own. 

After 10 minutes she invites them to come to the front of the class and share their answers on the doc.cam. This is another way to have students participate in the lesson and to check for understanding.

 Instructional Setting:

Ms. Danielson uses the before during and after techniques often.  Before a lesson, she does a review of: Know, What to know, Learned and sometimes Still want to know. She generally reviews what they have learned on the previous day and adds it to the current days lesson.  She frequently checks for understanding and will modify techniques until she feels that they are ready to move forward. She tries to incorporate as many songs, movements, and visuals as she can to help with memorization. 

*Do you know the consonants, the consonants, the consonants, Do you know the consonants of the alphabet? There’s: BC&D, FG&H, JK&L, MN&P, QRS, TV&W, XYZ Boom Boom!