Final answer:
The lesson in which children write word families on the chalkboard is an example of a phonics lesson, emphasizing the correlation between sounds and their written representations. This foundational reading skill aids students in recognizing spelling patterns and decoding words.
Step-by-step explanation:
A first grade teacher conducting a lesson on word families that involves writing words on the chalkboard is providing a lesson in phonics. Phonics is the method for teaching reading and writing by developing learners' phonemic awareness—the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate phonemes—in order to teach the correspondence between these sounds and the spelling patterns (graphemes) that represent them. The word families exercise is focused on teaching students how different words can be formed from a common base or pattern, thus emphasizing a fundamental phonics skill.
In the provided examples, whether it was spelling the word 'doll' or recognizing and reading a list of simple words, the focus is on the sounds of the letters and understanding that every object or concept has a name that can be spelled and read. This lays the groundwork for being able to decode and read other words in the future, which is a central component of phonics instruction.
Lastly, the Review sections illustrate exercises that are traditionally found in phonics lessons, such as identifying specific sounds in words and categorizing them based on spelling patterns. These exercises further support the idea that this lesson is centered on phonics.