Emergent Literacy Design
Rationale: This lesson will help children identify /t/, the phoneme represented by T. Students will learn to recognize /t/ in spoken words by learning a sound analogy (tapping) and the letter symbol T, practice finding /t/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /t/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.
Materials: Primary Paper and pencil; chart with “Tommy tricked Tim and took his train off the track”; Dr. Seuss’s ABC (Random house, 1963); word cards with the words: TUG, TOY, BAKE, TON, TOOK, and BEST; assessment worksheet (URL below)
Procedures: 1. Say: Our language is a puzzle. We have to have each piece to piece together words. We have to collect all of the pieces in the puzzle. Today, we are going to learn about spotting the mouth move /t/. We spell /t/ with the letter T. T looks like a hammer and /t/ sounds like you are tapping.
2. Let’s pretend to tap our desks with a hammer. /t/ /t/ /t/. (pretend to tap with hammer). Notice where your tongue is? (point to top of mouth). When we say /t/, we blow air out while moving our tongue from the roof of our mouth down.
3. Let me show you how to find the sound /t/ in the word list. I’m going to stretch out list very slowly and I want you to listen for the taps. lll-iii-sss-ttt. Now slower: Llllll-iiiiiiiiii-ssssss-tttttttt There it is! I felt my tongue at the roof of my mouth and move down. Tapping /t/ is in list.
4. Let’s try a tongue tickler (on chart) Tommy and Tim are playing with trains. Tim was taking too long with her turn on the train track. Tommy told Tim that Mom called for him so he would go look for her. Tim left to go find mom. Here’s our tickler: “Tommy tricked Tim and took his train off the track.” Everyone say it three times together. Now say it again and stretch out the /t/ at the beginning of each word. “Ttttttttommy ttttttricked Tttttttim and tttttook his ttttrain off the tttttttrack.” Try it again, and this time break it off the word: “/t/ ommy /t/ ricked /t/ im and /t/ ook his /t/rain off the /t/ rack.”
5. (Have students take out primary paper and pencil) We use letter T to spell /t/. Capital T looks like a hammer. Let’s write the lowercase letter t. Start at the rooftop and go straight down to the sidewalk. Lowercase t is just a younger T so we cross it on the fence instead of the rooftop like the capital t. I want to see everyone’s t. After I put a smiley face on it, I want you to write 9 more like it.
6. Call on students to answer and tell how they know: Do you hear /t/ in tell or fun? Top or brush? Cup or train? Tongue or fan? Lift or can? Say: Lets see if you can spot the mouth move /f/ in some words. Pretend to tap your desk if you hear /t/: ask, tell, son, table, dog, two, blanket, roof, box, tooth.
7. Say: “Let’s look at an alphabet book. Dr. Seuss tells us about tired turtles taking a nap on a turtle tree!” Read the bookmarked page for letter T, drawing out the /t/. Ask the children if they can think of any other words that start with /t/. Ask them to name animals that start with /t/. (tortoise, turkey, tiger, t-rex, toad, tiger shark, tree frog, termite, toucan) Have each student draw a picture of the animals and display them around the room.
8. Show TUG and model how to decide if it is tug or bug: The T tells me to tap, /t/, so this word is ttt-uu-gg. You try some: TOY: toy or boy? BAKE: take or bake? TON: son or ton? TOOK: took or book? BEST: test or best?
9. For assessment, pass out the worksheet. Student’s practice writing the letter T and then color in the pictures that start with T.
References: Tongue Tickler: http://wp.auburn.edu/rdggenie/home/materials/ticklers/