Short e Bible Reader

Last week, my first grader gave Lesson 2 of my Phonics by The Book series a try. He did very well and helped me work a few kinks out before it was ready for you!

*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.

A Mess of God’s Best

Lesson 2: A Mess of God’s Best tells the story of the fall of man (from Genesis 3) and focuses on short e with blends and digraphs. The activities are very similar to those in Lesson 1 to help build confidence and independence in your young reader.

In this post, you’ll find:

my A Mess of God’s Best reader (with a focus on short e words)
printables & activities for reinforcing short e words with blends/digraphs
printables & activities to coincide with sight words (from Fry’s first 100 Sight Word & Pre-Primer/Primer lists)
writing ideas & prompts
Bible Verse activities
A lesson outline that gives a plan for spacing out the activities over the week (note: we didn’t do all of these activities, some are just suggestions)

READER: A MESS OF GOD’S BEST

Day 1: Before reading, I had a few words written on a dry erase board so I’d remember to discuss the meaning when I read the text.

On subsequent days, I gave over more and more responsibility to him, like I did with the reader in Lesson 1.

SHORT E: 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!

1. Short e word sort: We sorted the short e word families: -ell, -ent, & -est. I modeled first, reading each word, looking for the pattern, and he finished the sort. He read all the words after sorting. We scrambled them up and he resorted with support, then we took turns reading the words. Most of these words come from the reader.

2. He resorted with support, then used a highlighter to find the patterns. Then, he read all the words.

3. Little Words Activity with TEMPTS. I cut apart the letters and mix them up.

He makes little words, then tries his hand at figuring out what word he’ll spell when he uses all the letters.

He guessed serpent; but eventually, I gave him the word: tempts.

4. We went on a word hunt with the short e word sort words.

I pulled out all the words from the sort that are in the A Mess of God’s Best Reader and we sorted them by pattern.

As we read through the book, I placed certain words above each page and he found them and highlighted them throughout the text. (I placed the reader in plastic sleeve protectors.)

5. To see a blind sort in action, see Lesson 1 under Short a (also #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 Mess of God’s Best Reader and word cards in the Word-Wac-Woe activity.)

I pulled these sight words from the reader to be his new sight words for the week. Again, 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: Ask God for help.

We used our pocket chart to put these words in ABC order. He puts in order, then reads them to me. If you want to integrate some writing, have your child write the words down on paper or a dry erase board when finished alphabetizing.

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)

Display and read 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 word and crossing them off their game boards. Directions are in the download as well.

In order to make printing more paper and ink friendly, I kept the new sight words from Lesson 2 separate from the sight words in Lesson 1. In other words, if you’ve already printed the sight words from Lesson 1, you only need to print pages 6-9 of this download. You can view pages 3-5 of Lesson 2’s download to see which sight words are repeated from Lesson 1 and pull them from your sight word pile. I hope that makes sense. 🙂

WRITING:

Dictation sentence: She went to check the smell. I like to use this as a sort of assessment. Read the sentence aloud several times and ask your child to write it down, only giving limited help. (It reviews short e words as well as sight words.)