Emergent Literacy Guide
Brush your teeth with F!
Rationale: This lesson will help children identify the phoneme /f/, which is represented by F. Students will learn to recognize /f/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation, brushing teeth, and the letter symbol F, practice finding /f/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /f/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.
Materials: Pencils and primary paper: chart with “Fred’s funny friend felt filthy”; drawing paper and crayons; Dr. Seuss’s ABC (Random House, 1963); word cards with FOOT, FEEL, FIND, FLIP, and FISH; assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /f/ (URL below)
Procedure: 1. Say: Our written language is a secret code. The tricky part is learning what letters stand for-when our mouths move, we say words. Today we are going to work on spotting the mouth move for /f/. We spell /f/ with the letter F. F looks like a toothbrush, like the one you use in the morning to brush your teeth! /f/ sounds like a toothbrush brushing teeth.
2. Now, lets brush our teeth ourselves! */f/, /f/, /f/* (Put hand up to mouth and pretend to brush teeth while making /f/ /f/ /f/). Now, lets take notice where our top teeth are right now. They are touching our bottom lip. When we say /f/, we blow air between our top teeth and lower lip.
3. Let me show you how to find /f/ in the word “Leaf”. I’m going to stretch leaf out in super slow motion and listen for my toothbrush (“/f/ sound”). Lll-ee-ea-af. Now slower: Lll-ee-eea-aff. There it was. I felt my teeth touch my bottom lip! We are saying /f/ in leaf.
4. Lets try a tongue twister (on chart). “Fred felt friendly at the family farm.” Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /f/ at the beginning of the words. “Fffred ffffelt fffriendly at the ffffamily fffarm.” Try it again, and this time break it off the word: “/f/red /f/elt /f/riendly at the /f/amily /f/arm..”
5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We use letter F to spell /f/. Capital F looks like a toothbrush. Lets write the lowercase letter f. Start just below the rooftop. Start to make a little c up in the air, then straighten it out all the way down to the sidewalk. Then cross it at the fence. I want to see everyone’s f. 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 here /f/ in fire or Liar? Finger or arm? Fish or shark? Float or boat? Funny or Bunny? Let’s see if you can spot the mouth move /f/ in some words. Brush your teeth if you hear /f/: The frantic fish fled to get fed in the lake.
7. Say: ‘”Let’s look at an alphabet book. Dr. Seuss tells us about a funny creature with four feathers growing right out of his head!” Read page 16, drawing out /f/. Ask children if they can think of other words with /f/. Ask them to make up a silly creature name like Flippy-floppy-foe, or figgity-frighty-fang. Then have each student write their silly creature’s name with invented spelling and draw a picture of their silly creature however they would like. Display their work.
8. Show FAN and model how to decided if it is fan or man: The F tells me to brush my teeth, /f/, so this word is fffff-an, fan. You try some: Feed or Lead? Flip or lip?
Foot or nook? Four or six? Feathers or hair?
9. For assessment, distribute the worksheet. Students are to circle the objects that start with f and color the objects that they circle. Call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step 8.
Reference: http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/voyages/brockel.html
Assessment worksheet:
https://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/f-begins1.htm
