Tick Tock Goes the Clock (T)
Emergent Literacy Design
Rationale: This lesson will help children identify /t/, the phoneme represented by T. Students will learn how to recognize /t/ in spoken words by learning a sound analogy (ticking of a clock) 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; sentence strip with ‘Tommy tricked Timmy and took his train off the tracks.’; word cards with tomato, toy, tar, tick, toe, toast, test, taste and tug; Assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /t/ (URL below).
Procedures-
1. Our written language is a secret code. The mouth moves as we say words and letters, which is the tricky part. Today we are going to work on how to spot the mouth move when we say the letter t. We spell /t/ with letter T. /t/ sounds like a clock ticking.
2. Say: “Let’s make the sound of /t/ by saying ‘tik, tock, tik’(/t/,/t/,/t/). We blow air between our bottom lip and top teeth.
3. Let me show you how to find /t/ in the word fast. I am going to stretch fast out in slow motion and listen for my clock ticking. Fff-a-a-st. Slower: Fff-a-a-a-ss-t. There it is! I felt my tongue touch my top teeth and blow air. Tick /t/ is in fast.
4. Let’s try a tongue tickler now (on sentence strip). Tommy has a brother named Tim and they like to play with trains. Tommy had been playing with Tim to trick him and finally got him. Now he tricked him again. “Tommy tricked Tim and took his train off the track.” Everyone says it three times together. Now say it again and stretch the /t/ this time and the beginning of the words. “Ttttommy tttricked Ttttimmy and tttook his tttrain off the tttrack.” Try it again, and this time break it off the word: “/t/ ommy /t/ ricked /t/ immy and /t/ ook his /t/ rain off the /t/ rack.
5. (Have students get out primary paper and pencil). We use letter T to spell /t/. Capital T looks like a flower. Let’s write the lowercase t. Start at the line with the cloud and draw a line all the way down to the bottom of the flower. Then go in the middle of the cloud and flower on the dotted line to make a horizontal line. I want to see everybody’s t. After I put a smile on it, I want you to make six more just like it!
6. Call on students to answer and tell how they know: Do you hear /t/ in fun or tug? Rest or sore? Lift or up? Top or on? Toad or Road? Say: Let’s see if you can spot the mouth move /t/ in some words. Point to the clock if you hear t: trust, silly, roach, blue, table, tiny, read, two.
7. Say: Let’s look at a song on ‘the measured mom’ called “T is for Teddy Bear.” We hear all about how the teddy bear gets upstairs for bed. Read the first line, drawing out t. Ask children if they can think of other words with t. Ask them to make up a silly creature name like Titter-teck-tell of tooter-trip-tang. Then have each student write their silly name with invented spelling and draw a picture to display.
8. Show TUG and model how to decide if it is tug or gut. The T tells me to tick my clock, /t/, so this word is tt-ug. You try some: TAIL: tail or sail? FOOT: foot or book? TOE: foe or toe? TOY: toy or foy?
9. For the assessment, distribute the worksheet. Students trace the words that begin with the letter t.
Reference-
Emergent Literacy by Anna Bolton: https://abolt833.wixsite.com/lessondesigns/emergent-literacy
https://thekindergartensmorgasboard.com/2018/06/emergent-readers-lesson-plans.html
Assessment worksheet:
https://twistynoodle.com/trace-the-words-that-begin-with-the-letter-t-worksheet/