A. Syllable Sleuth: Two-Syllable Words: “sea-son,” “be-tween,” “con-crete,” “emp-ty,” “la-dy,” “hun-gry,” “dea-bud,” “praff-y”

• Suggested transition song, sung to the tune of “I’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad”:

“We’ve been workin’ on some long words, sound by sound by sound. We’ve been workin’ on some long words, so we can read more words aloud. We take a word like ‘maybe’ and break it into parts. ‘May’ plus ‘be’ makes ‘maybe,’ and now it’s time to start!”

• Begin the Words Rule instructional practice:

1. Teacher says: “It’s time to be Syllable Sleuths. We are going to find some clues to help us figure out how to break longer words into parts so we can read them. Let’s start with a new word.”

2. Teacher displays the word on the board: “season.”

3. Teacher models the Syllable Sleuth practice aloud:

• Look for the vowels, and put a dot below each.
• Look for the consonants between the vowels.
• Divide the word (in this case before the 's").

4. Teacher draws a swoop under the first syllable and asks:

“What vowel sound do we hear in this first syllable?” (ē)

“What letters are spelling that vowel sound?” (“e” and “a”)

“How do you know that ‘ea’ is spelling the /ē/ sound in this syllable?” (because it is a vowel team; we hear the name of the first vowel in a vowel team)

“So how do we pronounce this first syllable?” (“sea”)

5. Teacher draws a swoop under the second syllable and asks:

“What is this second syllable?”  (“son”)

“How do we know that it isn’t ‘sōn’?” (because it is a closed syllable, so the vowel is short)

“What else do you notice about the way this syllable is pronounced when we put the word together?” (The ‘o’ sounds like /u/.)

6. Teacher says: “That’s right. Sometimes the sound of short vowels changes slightly in a multisyllabic word like this one. But we know this word because we have heard it many times. When we know how words sound, it helps us to pronounce each word correctly.”

7. Teacher says: “Remember, a sleuth is a detective. When you’re a syllable sleuth, your job is to search for the clues that let you know you have found a syllable. As a syllable sleuth, you will look for vowel sounds to see how to divide the words into syllables to read them.”

8. Teacher distributes Syllable Sleuth Word List in a transparent sleeve, whiteboard markers, whiteboard erasers, and a clipboard (if students are not sitting at a desk).

9. Teacher reminds students (if needed) of the steps in the Syllable Sleuth instructional practice that were just modeled:

• Locate the vowels, and put a dot below each one.
• Look for the consonants between the vowels.
• Divide the word into syllables.
• Pronounce each syllable according to the spelling pattern (i.e., closed, open, magic “e,” r-controlled, and vowel team).

10. Students work individually or with a partner to segment each word into syllables and decode the word