Miss Payne's Reading Lessons
Emergent Literacy
Jordan Payne
The Ticking T
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 meaningful representation (the 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; Paper with "Tommy tricked Tim and took his train off the track"; A Tap and a Pat (Lilli Henderson, https://www.readinga-z.com/book/decodable.php?id=6); word cards with TOP, TELL, LAME, TIME, BOW, TAKE; assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /t/.
Procedures:
1. Say: Our written language is a secret code. The tricky part is learning what letters stand for—the mouth moves we make as we say words. Today we're going to work on spotting the mouth move /t/. We spell /t/ with letter T. T sounds like a ticking clock.
2. Let's pretend to be a ticking clock, /t/, /t/, /t/. Notice where your teeth are? (They’re close together). Also note where your tongue is. (At the roof of mouth) When we say /t/, we blow air between out top teeth and bottom teeth, with our tongue at the roof of our mouth.
3. Let me show you how to find /t/ in the word sift. I'm going to stretch sift out in super slow motion and listen for the ticking clock. Ss-i-f-ttt. Slower Sss-i-i-i-fff-ttt. Wow we found it! I felt my tongue at the roof of my mouth and the air blow out between my teeth!
4. Let's try a tongue twister [on chart]. "Tommy tricked Tim and took his train off the track.” Let’s say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /t/ at the beginning of the words. "Tttommy tttricked Tttim and tttook his tttrain off the tttrack” 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/. Let's write the lowercase letter t. Start just below the rooftop. Make a straight line all the way down to the sidewalk. Then cross it at the fence. I want to see everybody's t. Now, I want to see you all make 9 more t’s of your own just like that one.
6. Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /t/ in talk or say? finger or toe? Ten or nine? Teeth or lips? Movie or television? Say: Let's see if you can spot the mouth move /t/ in some words. Move your finger around an imaginary clock if you hear /t/. tape, balloon, tater tot, twist, happy, yellow, tomorrow, left
7. Say: “In our book, we read about Sam and Pam. Neither of their names have our ticking T sound in them. Can you think of any names that have ticking T’s in them? How about Tttthomas? Or Ttttaylor? Lets make a list of T names we know and make up some fake names like Tella or Tordan.”
8. Show TOP and model how to decide if it is top or bop: The T tells me I hear a ticking clock, /t/, so this word is ttt-op, top. You try some: TELL: tell or fell? LAME: tame or lame? TIME: mime or time? BOW: bow or tow? TAKE: sake or take?
9. For assessment, distribute a worksheet. Students are to complete the partial spellings and color the pictures that begin with T. We will use this website as our worksheet: (https://www.readinga-z.com/book.php?id=451)
10. Let’s read A Tap and A Pat. Pam and Sam the dog are best buds. Sam has a special mat he likes to sit on. Lets see what color is mat is and what he and Pam like to do together. We’ll have to read to find out!
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