Sam asked Jane to write “lived” and “loved” on the flip chart. Jane got up and did this, while Sam stayed sitting with the group. He asked the students what was the same and what was different about the two words. One student pointed out that the words were the same except for one letter. She said that “lived” was spelled with an I, while “loved was spelled with an O. Jane put a rectangle around the second letter in each word to highlight this difference.

Another student pointed out that both words ended in -ED. Sam mentioned that -ED indicated “past tense”. Then he asked, "What have you noticed about the word endings in the poem?" When no one responded, he pointed out that the whole poem was in the “past tense”. Several of the students nodded when Sam said this.

The next two words that Sam asked Jane to write on the flip chart were “treasure” and “pleasure”. One student pointed out that the first two letters were different in the two words. As before, Jane highlighted the difference with a rectangle.

Sam described these consonant pairs as “consonant blends”.

The next pair of words that Sam asked Jane to write on the flip cart was “weariness” and “dreariness”. One student pointed out that these words had the same ending, -NESS. Sam asked what the “root word” for WEARINESS would be. One student said, “weary”. Same asked how “weary” is spelled. The student wasn’t sure. Jane spelled it on the flip chart.

Sam asked how the root word as changed when -NESS was added. No one answered, so Sam pointed out that the Y was changed to I.

Then Sam asked Jane to write “happy” on the flip cart, and asked the students to spell “happiness”.

Several of the students called out the spelling of “happiness”. Jane wrote this down.

 

Jane asked what the Y “sounds like” at the end of a word. There was no response, so Jane told the students, using “ weary”, “dreary”, and “happy” as examples. Then she asked what Y “sounds like” at the beginning of a word. Again, there was no response. Jane gave examples, “yes” and “yellow”. There was still no response, so Jane told the students that it “sounds like yuh”.