CTRD Lesson Designs
Tick Tocking along with T
Emergent Literacy Design
Rationale: This lesson will help children identify with /t/, the phoneme represented by T. Students will learn to recognize /t/ in spoken words by learning a sound analogy (ticking 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
Chart with “Today Tim takes the turtle to town”
Drawing paper and crayons
Dr. Seuss’s ABC book
Word cards:
TAP, TAN, TAIL, TOOK, TALK, and TART
Assessment worksheet
Procedures: 1. Say: Our written language is a secret code. The tricky part is learning what letters strand for – the mouth moves we make as we say words. Today we’re going to work on spotting the mouth move /t/. When the seconds hand moves around the clock it makes the tick tock, or t t t t.
2. Let’s pretend we are looking at a clock, /t/, /t/, /t/. Notice what your tongue does? When we say /t/, our tongue starts out at the roof of our mouth and air pushes it off.
3. Let me show you how to find /t/ in the word swift. I’m going to stretch swift out in slow motion and listen for the /t/ sound a clock makes: ss-www-i-i-ift. Now slower: sww-i-i-fff-tt. There it was! I felt my tongue in my mouth and air push it down. I can hear the clock tick /t/ in swift.
4. Now let’s try a tongue tickler [on chart]. Tickler Tale: Tim has pet turtles and the turtles are sick! Tim must take his turtles to town so the vet can help Tim. Time must hurry. “Today Tim takes the turtles to town.” Let’s say it together three times. Now say it again, and this time stretch the /t/ at the beginning of the words/ “TTToday TTTTim tttakes the tttturtles tto ttttown.” Try it again, and this time break it off the word: “/T/oday /T/im /t/akes the /t/urtles /t/o /t/own.”
5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We use letter T to spell /t/. Capital T looks like an upside-down broom. Let’s write the lowercase letter t. Start just below the rooftop then draw a straightened line all the way down to the sidewalk. Then cross it at the fence. I want to see everybody’s t. After I put a sticker on your paper, I want you to make nine more t’s just like the first one.
6. Call on your students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /t/ in black or white? Hand or feet? Hot or cold? Oven or stove? Table or chair? Say: Let’s see if you can spot the mouth move /t/ in some words. Do a clock movement with your arm if you hear the /t/ sound in the words: tap, car, trick, cat, drive, chest, finger, toe, television, sat.
7. Say: “Let’s look at an alphabet book. Dr. Seuss uses a tongue tickler to name things that start with T. Read page 39, stressing /t/. Can you think of any items that you use at school whose names start with letter t? Write the name of the item and draw a picture of it. Then I will display the students’ work.
8. Show TAP and model how to decide if it is tap or sap: the T tells me to think of the tick tock of a clock, /t/, so this is word is ttt-ap, tap. You try some: TAN: tan or man? TAIL: tail or snail? TOOK: took or book? TALK: talk or chalk? TART: tart or smart?
9. For assessment, I will hand out the worksheet. Students are asked to identify what words start with "t" by drawing a line from turtles 1, 2, & 3 to the three words that begin with the letter "t." As the worksheet is being done, I will call on students to come to my desk one at a time and individually read the phonetic cue word from step #8.
References:
Emily Wilcox, "Tttick Tttock with T's"
Assessment Worksheet:
https://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/t-begins1.htm
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