Brush Your Teeth with F
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Charleigh Bailey
Emergent Literacy Design
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Rationale: This lesson will help children identify /f/, the phoneme represented by F. Students will learn to recognize /f/ in spoken words by learning a sound analogy (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: Primary paper and pencil; chart with "Fanny’s funny father finds Fanny’s friends"; drawing paper and crayons; Max’s ABC by Rosemary Wells (Puffin Books, 2008); word cards with FAT, FACE, HAIR, FILL, PAN, and FELL; assessment worksheet drawing pictures with /f/ (URL below).
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 /f/. We spell /f/ with letter F. F looks like a toothbrush, and /f/ sounds like brushing teeth!
2. Let's pretend to brush our teeth, /f/, /f/, /f/. [Model brushing teeth to students] Notice where your top teeth are? (Touching lower 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 loft. I'm going to stretch loft out in super slow motion and listen for my toothbrush. Lll-o-o-oft. Slower: Lll-o-o-o-fff-t There it was! I felt my teeth touch my lip and blow air. Toothbrush /f/ is in loft.
4. Let's try a tongue tickler [on chart]. Fanny has lost some of her friends on the playground. Fanny’s father is really funny and finds all of her friends. Here’s our tickler: "Fanny’s funny father finds Fanny’s friends." Let’s all say it three times together. Now let’s say it again, and this time, stretch the /f/ at the beginning of the words. "Fffany's fffunny fffather fffinds Fffanny’s fffriends." Try it again, and this time break it off the word: "/f/ anny’s /f/ unny /f/ ather /f/ inds /f/ anny’s /f/ riends.
5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We use letter F to spell /f/. Capital F looks like a toothbrush. Let's write the lowercase letter f. Start just below the rooftop. Start to make a little cup in the air, then straighten it out all the way down to the sidewalk. Then cross it at the fence. I want to see everybody's f. After I put a star 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 /f/ in ceiling or floor? flowers or plants? things or stuff? shift or slide? Loft or house? Say: Let's see if you can spot the mouth move /f/ in some words. Brush your teeth if you hear /f/: The, filthy, frog, leaped, into, the, freezing, flowery, pond.
7. Say: "Let's look at an alphabet book. Rosemary Wells tells us a silly story about Max and how he had to take off his pants fast because of the ants!" Read page 12, drawing out /f/. Ask children if they can think of other words with /f/. Ask them to make up silly names for the fast ants in the book like Fina-fall, or Faster-farther-fig. Then have each student write their silly name with invented spelling and draw a picture of their fast ant. Display their work in the front of the classroom.
8. Show FAT and model how to decide if it is fat or cat: The F tells me to brush my teeth, /f/, so this word is fff-at, fat. You try some: FACE: face or race? HAIR: fair or hair? FILL: fill or pill? PAN: fan or pan? FELL: fell or sell?
9. For assessment, distribute the worksheet. Students practice writing the letter F and draw and label two objects that begin with F. Use popsicle sticks with the students’ names on them to call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #8.
Resources
Sarah Jane Brock, Fishing Frenzy.
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/voyages/brockel.html
Book: Wells, R. (2008). Max’s ABC. New York, NY: Puffin Books.
Assessment worksheet (Beginning Sound F):
https://www.free-math-handwriting-and-reading-worksheets.com/f-letter.html
