Emergent Literacy

Typing on the Keyboard with T

Emergent Literacy Design

Rationale:

This lesson will help children identify the phoneme /t/, which is represented by the grapheme T. Students will learn to recognize /t/ in spoken words by learning a sound analogy (typing on a keyboard) that matches the letter symbol, T. They will practice finding /t/ in spoken words, and use phoneme awareness with /t/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.

Materials:

Powerpoint- picture of keyboard, computer, and someone typing on a keyboard or typewriter, tongue tickler “Timmy tricked Tom and tossed his taco in the trash”, animation of writing capital T and lowercase t, slides with the words TOE, MEET, TALL, MAIL, TOOK, TAPE, and TEAM, primary paper and pencil, powerpoint slide with animation/gif of T and t being written, slide with a link to a youtube video showing how to write T and t, Cat in the Hat by Dr. Suess, activity worksheet for letter T, powerpoint slide with assessment worksheet on it (URL in references).

Procedures:

Say: “The letter T is used in a lot of sounds and words we use in our language. It is important we know what sound it makes. We do this with our mouth. Our mouth moves in different ways for each letter of the alphabet. Today we are going to learn how our mouth moves with the letter T. We spell ‘/t/‘ with T. Watch my mouth move as I say /t/. Now you try. Everyone say, ’/t/‘. Can you feel your tongue at the roof of your mouth right behind your teeth? The sound comes out when you release your tongue. Let’s try it again.”
Show powerpoint slide with the pictures of a keyboard, a gif (moving picture) of someone typing on a computer or laptop, or a typewriter. Say: “Do you see the person typing on the computer making a tapping sound? Let’s all act like we are typing on a computer keyboard. This action makes a tapping sound /t/. Let’s do our imaginary keyboard typing and say, ‘/t/, /t/, /t/‘.”
Show tongue tickler on next powerpoint slide. Say: “Now let’s try a tongue tickler. Timmy and Tom are brothers who like to play tricks on each other. Tom had a taco he was going to eat for lunch. But, Timmy tricked Tom and tossed his taco in the trash when he wasn’t looking. That probably wasn’t very nice. But, let’s practice our tickler: “Timmy tricked Tom and tossed his taco in the trash.” Now, everyone say it three times together. *say 3 times* Good! Let’s say it again and this time stretch the ‘/t/‘ at the beginning of the words. “Tttimmy tttricked Tttom and tttossed his tttaco in the tttrash.” Great job. Now, this time let’s break it off each word. ‘/t/ immy /t/ ricked /t/ om and /t/ ossed his /t/ aco in the /t/ rash.’
Say: “Now that we’ve practiced our tongue tickler, I’m going to show you how to find ‘/t/‘ in the word “best”. For example, this was the best day ever! I’m going to stretch ‘best’ out in slow motion. Listen for the tapping T sound the typing on a keyboard makes. Bb-e-e-ss-tt. Let me say it even slower. Bbb-e-e-sss-ttt. There it was! Could you hear it? I felt my tongue at the roof of my mouth behind my teeth. Did you hear the /t/ sound it made when I released my tongue?”
Show/flip through slides with the words TOE, MEET, TALL, MAIL, TOOK, TAPE, and TEAM. Call on students during this time. Say: “Now let’s have you practice. Do you hear /t/ in ‘toe’ or ‘low’? In ‘meet’ or ‘green’? ‘Tall’ or ‘hall’? ‘Beam’ or ‘team’? Good! Now let’s see if you can spot the mouth move like /t/ in a few words. Do the typing on a keyboard action if you hear /t/: ‘My teacher tests us on time with a ten question test.’ Good job!”
Have animation of capital T and lowercase t being written on powerpoint slide. Have students take out primary paper and pencil. Pull up slide with YouTube video of writing letter T (in references). Say: “Let’s watch a quick video on how to write the letter T which spells /t/.” “Now that we’ve watched how to write the letter T, let’s practice on our own paper.” (Pull up slide with animation on it while they are doing this so you can reference the animation as help.) “The capital T looks like this (point to animation). The lowercase T looks like this (point to animation). Let’s start with uppercase T first. Start at the rooftop and draw a straight line down all the way to the sidewalk. Now, go back to the rooftop and draw a straight line across the top. This line will go across the top of the line you just drew going down. Let’s practice writing the lowercase letter t. Start just below the rooftop and draw a straight line down to the sidewalk. Then, go back to the middle where the fence is and make a straight line across. Good job! Now practice doing it on your own ten times while I walk around.”
Say: “Now that we’ve learned how to write letter ’T’ and know it makes the /t/ sound, let’s read a book together. You might know this book, it is “The Cat in the Hat” by Dr. Suess! This book is about a talking cat that visits two children, Sally and Sam while their mother is away. The cat seems nice but ends up making a lot of messes that their mother would not be happy about. What will they do? Will their mother be mad? Will they clean up all the cat’s messes in time? Let’s read and find out. Before we read, I want everyone to show me their typing keyboards whenever they hear /t/.”
Assessment: (have powerpoint slide with worksheet on it) distribute the worksheet to everyone. Students will color each picture. As they are wrapping up coloring and maybe even during, start calling on students at random to come up to the board, point to each picture, and say the name of each picture.

References:

Brewster, Ellison, Six Silly Snakes

https://ellisonbrewster.wixsite.com/lessondesigns/emergent-literacy

Youtube video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h3B8s9Yw9Y

Assessment worksheet:

https://www.kidzone.ws/prek_wrksht/learning-letters/t.htm

Decodable Book:

Suess, Dr., The Cat in the Hat

Link to gif:

https://media.giphy.com/media/xkmQfH1TB0dLW/giphy.gif