Listen for the letter T from a clock: Tick Tock, Tick Tock

Emergent Literacy Design

By: Shelby Pickett 

Rationale: The lesson will help children identify /t/, the phoneme represented by T.

Students will learn to recognize and understand /t/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation (listening to a clock) and the letter simple 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 “Tony tickled Tyler and took his toy off the table”; drawing paper and crayons; Tin Man Fix-It (Cushman, 1990); word cards with TALK, TO, TABLE, THIS, and TOCK; assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /t/. (link below)

Procedures:

 Say: Our written language is a secret code. The weird part is learning what letters stand for- we move our mouth as we say the words. This morning we are going to work on going over how we place our teeth and tongue when saying /t/. We spell /t/ with letter T.

 An example of hearing a T would be the tick tock that we hear from a clock, /t/, /t/, /t/. (Show them a picture of a clock) Do you hear that? (tick, tock, tick, tock) using the tip of the tongue to touch above the top of teeth, moving my fingers like a pendulum.

 Let me show you how to find /t/ in the word light. I’m going to stretch light out in a long motion and listen for the /t/. Lll-igh-t. Slower: Lllll-iiiggghh-t. There, you found it! I felt the tip of my tongue touch above the top of my teeth. I can hear the /t/ in light.

 Let’s try a tongue tickler now! “Tony tickled Tyler and took his toy off the table.” Now let’s say it together three times. Now say it again and stretch the /t/ at the beginning of the words. “Tttony tttickled Tttyler and tttook his tttoy off the tttable.” Try it again, and this time break it off the word, “/t/ony /t/ickled /t/yler and /t/ook his toy off the /t/able.”

Now it is time to get our paper and pencil! We are going to use the letter T to spell /t/. Capital T looks like two long lines but with one on top of the other- like this T and the lower case looks like a cross, like this t. Let’s write the lowercase t. Start just below the rooftop and make one straight line and at the fence make a line going through the straight line. Let me see your t. Once I check it and put a sticker on it, I want you to make 5 more just like it.

Next, I will call on a few students to tell how they know: Do you hear /t/ in talk or loud? Talk or bench? To or from? This or is? Say: Let’s see if you see the mouth move /t/ in some words. Raise your hand if you wear /t/: The tall girl took her tiny toy to town.

 Now, lets look at book called Tin Man Fix-It (Cushman, 1990). We are going to read about a tin man who can fix everything Can you guess what his name starts with? That’s right, it starts with a T! Page 1 introduces the main character, Tim. After I read the story, I will ask my students if there are any other words they can think of that begin with the letter /t/. I will ask them to come up with fun sayings for the letter /t/ like, Tatttaa-ttttttic-ttttoe. Then I will ask students to write a funny story and a neat picture to finish off their story.

I will show them the word TO and ask them to decided if it is to or do: The T helps me know that it the word t-o. I will then ask them to try some words: TOOK: took or book? TIM: tim or him? TAKE: take or bake?

Assessment, I will pass out a worksheet. On the worksheet I will ask students to write lowercase /t/ and uppercase /T/. Also, on the assessment they will trace a word that starts with /T/. On a blank sheet of paper students will be asked to write more words they know that begin with /T/ and to draw pictures that go along with the words. I will ask them to present those to the class.

Resources: 

 Assessment worksheet: http://www.kindergartenworksheets.net/handwriting-practice-worksheets/letter-t-writing-practice-worksheet-printable.html

Reference: Murray, Bruce; Emergent Literacy Design: Brush Your Teeth with F

http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/sightings/murrayel.html

Class link: http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/connections.html