Bossy OR Bible Reader

We made it: the final lesson in Unit 1 of Phonics by The Book! Yay! Today, our focus is sharing our Bossy or Bible reader plus activities.

*This is a series I originally posted YEARS ago on This Reading Mama. My goal is to revise it and add more to it. But for now, I’m just moving it to its new home here.

*Click on the green download button towards the BOTTOM of this post to download this lesson.

Lesson 8 focuses on the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt (Exodus 4-14) and the bossy or pattern, comparing it to the short o pattern.

In this post, you’ll find my:

A Heart of Scorn reader (with a focus on OR words)
printables & activities for reinforcing OR words
printables & activities to coincide with sight words (most are from Fry’s first 100 Sight Word & Pre-Primer/Primer lists)
writing ideas & prompts
focal Bible Verse (Deuteronomy 30:20) with activities
5-Day Lesson Outline that gives a plan for spacing out the activities over the week

(Note: Don’t stress out and feel like you have to do all of these activities. We certainly don’t. You are more than welcome to pick and choose what you want to use.)

READER: A Heart of Scorn

Before reading for the first time, I underlined words in the text to discuss the meaning when I read the text. On subsequent days, I gave over more and more responsibility to him.

BOSSY R (OR): If you like this sort, these are the same kind of sorts you’ll find in Words Their Way & all their supplement books. I highly recommend these!

Day 1: OR/short o sort: All of these words can be found in the reader.

We sorted the words by having the pattern OR or short o. I modeled first (keeping the oddball category & words out of the sort) reading each word, looking for the patterns, and he finished the sort. He read all the words after sorting and we discussed the meaning of a few words that were unknown to him. Then, I introduced the oddball category.

I added the oddball words (work & from) into the shuffle and he re-sorted with support.

Day 2: Say, Sort, Score (to see how to play in Lesson 5 of Unit 1.)

When we finished with the game, he wanted to highlight the patterns, so he did!

Day 3: Little Words Activity with FIRSTBORN. Ahead of time, I cut apart the letters and mixed them up so he wouldn’t know what word all the letters spelled.

He makes little words (Word suggestions are on the download. Except he informed me that I left out “snot”. Oh, the shame of it!),

then tries to figure out what word he can spell when he uses all the letters.

Day 4: Word Hunt

We re-sorted the words from the sort;

then I pulled words from the sort that appear on each page of the reader and he looked for them and underlined them. After we were done, we re-read the story (he read all the OR & short o words).

Day 5: Blind Sort

To see a blind sort in action, see Lesson 1 under Short a (#5 in that post.)

SIGHT WORDS: (You can find a list of sight words for the lesson on the very first page of the A Heart of Scorn Reader and word cards in the Word-Wac-Woe activity.) I pulled out three new words for him this week: first, water and then.

My suggestion is you also pull 2-5 new words out for your own child; but the majority of the words should already be familiar to him.

Secret Sentence: Unscramble the sight words to find the secret sentence: Listen to God.

(I have two letters of the secret sentence circled. This is to cue the child that this should be a capital letter.)

ABC Order (using word cards from Word-Wac-Woe)

Roll & Write a Sentence: Roll 2 dice, add the sum, then use the number code to fill in the sentence. (2 pages in download)

Word-Wac-Woe: (strategy resembles Tic-Tac-Toe) If you’ve already printed off words from Lessons 1-6, you only need to print off pages of the Word-Wac-Woe download for Lesson 8’s words.

Display and read through 15-20 of the sight word cards, jot them down on your game board, shuffle the cards and place them face-down in a pile.

Players take turns reading the sight words and crossing them off their game boards. We usually play that whoever crosses off their entire game board wins–this makes the game last longer and more words are read. Further directions are in the download.