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Emergent Literacy (EL)

Updated: Apr 20, 2021


Calling all Cats


Rationale: This lesson will help students identify /c/ in spoken words by learning a sound analogy (saying /C/-/C/-/C/). This will help them understand the letter and recognize it in words. It will help them learn how to write the symbol C. Students will also practice finding /c/ in words and apply phoneme awareness with c/c in phonic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.

Materials:

· Primary Paper and Pencil

· Drawing Paper and Crayons

· Dr. Seuss's Cat in the Hat (Random House 1957)

· Word Cards with CAR, CAT, COOL, CAKE, CALL CAN, CAP, TAP, MAN, JAR, ARC, ARM, BAKE, CLIMB, BALL, HAT

· Assessment Worksheet identifying pictures with /c/. (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 /C/. We spell /C/ with letter C. C looks like Car! /C/ sounds like what we say when we are asking to call a friend on the phone and say, "Can I c-c-call you later?"

2. Let’s pretend we are playing pretend and you see a lot of cats outside. Pretend you are telling someone about the cats outside! [Put your fists on your eyes like binoculars] Notice your tongue touching the top of your mouth inside in the middle and touching your teeth on the end! When we say /c/-/c/-/c/, our tongue touches the top of our mouth and our lips are open!

3. Let me show you how to find /c/ in the word climb. I’m going to say it very slowly and listen for c-c-c. cccccc-l-iiii-mmm-e There it is! I felt my tongue touch the top of my mouth!. C is at the beginning of climb.

4. Let’s try a tongue tickler [on chart]. Claire has a little girl cat. Claire is happy to see her every day after school. Here’s our tickler: “Claire calls her cool cat Callie”. Everyone say it three times all together. This time when you say it draw out all of the /c/s out at the beginning of the words. “Cccclaire ccccalls her ccccool cccat Cccallie”. Try it again, and this time break it off the word: “/C/laire /c/alls her /c/ool /c/at /C/allie”.

5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil.] We use letter C to spell /c/. Lower case c looks like an o with a hole in the side. Let’s write lowercase c. Start on the side walk and draw a curved line down towards the fence and curve it up back towards the sidewalk but stop halfway there. After I check your c, please write nine more cs on your paper.

6. Ask students to tell you how they knew: Do you hear /c/ in arc or arm? cream or dream? cart or heart? scar or far? school or pool? Say: Let’s see if you can spot /c/ in some words. Raise your hand if you hear /c/: The, crying, chameleon, calls, climbing, cool.

7. Say: Let’s look at Dr. Suess’ book Cat in the Hat. Dr. Suess tells us about the Cat in the Hat, read the title, drawing out /c/. Ask the students if they know any other words that start with a /c/. Ask each child to try to come up with a sentence that rhymes with /c/ in it like “Cat in the hat”. Display their work.

8. Show Cat and model how to decide if it is cat or hat: The C tells me to say /c/-/c/-/c/ and think about a kitty cat, so this word is ccc-at. You try some: CAKE: cake or bake? CALL: call or ball? CAN: can or man? CAR: car or jar? CAP: cap or tap?

9. To assess the students hand out this worksheet. Students color the pictures that begin with C. Call students individually to read the phonic cue words from step #8.



References

Book: Seuss. The Cat in the Hat. Random House USA Children’s Books, 1999.


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