Clicking a Pen With C!

By: Catherine Wiley

Catie cleans crates of caramel candy!

Rationale: This lesson will help children identify /c/, the phoneme represented by C. Students will learn to recognize /c/ in spoken words by learning a sound analogy (clicking a pen) and the letter symbol C, practice finding /c/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /c/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.

Materials: Primary paper and pencil; chart with "Catie cleans crates of caramel candy"; drawing paper and crayons; My “c” Book by Jane Belk Moncure (Scholastic); word cards with CAT, COP, SAND, CAMP, MEAT, and CLOUD; assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /c/. https://www.superteacherworksheets.com/phonics-beginningsounds/letter-hardc_WFFRW.pdf?up=1466611200

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 /c/. We spell /c/ with letter C. C looks like the clip on a pen, and /c/ sounds like the clicking of a pen.
2. Let's pretend to click our pen, /c/, /c/, /c/. [Pantomime clicking a pen] Notice where your tongue is? (Touching bottom teeth). When we say /c/, we keep our tongue steady behind our bottom teeth, and force air out from the back of our throat while leaving our mouths open.
3. Let me show you how to find /c/ in the word tact. I'm going to stretch tact out in super slow motion and listen for my click. Ttt-a-a-act. Slower: Ttt-a-a-a-ccc-t There it was! I felt my tongue stay steady and air come from the back of my throat. Clicking pen /c/ is in tact.
4. Let's try a tongue tickler [on chart]. Catie cleans crates of caramel candy. The caramel made the crate very dirty and sticky because it melted, so Catie must clean it up. Now the crate is all clean. Here’s our tickler: "Catie cleans crates of caramel candy" Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /c/ at the beginning of the words. "Cccatie cccleans cccrates of cccaramel cccandy." Try it again, and this time break it off the word: "/c/ atie /c/ leans /c/ rates of /c/ aramel /c/ andy.

5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We use letter C to spell /c/. Capital C looks like the clip on the side of a pen. Let's write the lowercase letter c. Start just below the rooftop. Start like a little a. Go up and touch the fence, then around and up. I want to see everybody's c. After I put a smile on it, I want you to make nine more just like it.

6. Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /c/ in spot or cat? camp or pie? tac or pin? Land or tuck? Cold or hot? Say: Let's see if you can spot the mouth move /c/ in some words. Click your pen if you hear /c/: The, cute, cuddly, dog, crawled, across, the, cozy, carpet.

7. Say: "Let's look at an alphabet book. This book tells us about a little girl named “c” and all of her fun adventures!" Read page 12, drawing out /c/. Ask children if they can think of other words with /c/. Ask them to make up a silly creature name like Cacker-clocker-cack, or Clipper-capper-coo. Then have each student write their silly name with invented spelling and draw a picture of their silly creature. Display their work.^h

8. Show CAT and model how to decide if it is cat or bat: The C tells me to click my pen, /c/, so this word is ccc-at, cat. You try some: COT: cot or dot? CART: cart or dart? CAMP: camp or lamp? SLOT: clot or slot? CAKE: cake or bake?

9. For assessment, distribute the worksheet. Students color the pictures that begin with C. Call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #8.