Brush Your Teeth With F

http://www.auburn.edu/~murraba/murrayel.htm

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 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: Primary paper and pencil; chart with "Fred's furry ferret feels frisky"; drawing paper and crayons; Dr. Seuss's ABC (Random House, 1963); word cards with FOG, FIX, MEET, FIND, PORK, and FAKE

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/. [Pantomime brushing teeth] Notice where your top teeth are? (Touching lower lip). When we say /f/, we blow air between out top teeth and lower lip.

3. Let me show you how to find /f/ in the word left.  I'm going to stretch left out in super slow motion and listen for my toothbrush.  Lll-e-e-eft.  Slower: Lll-e-e-e-fff-t. There it was!  I felt my teeth touch my lip and blow air. I can feel the toothbrush /f/ in left.

4. Let's try a tongue twister [on chart/board write]. "Fred's furry ferret feels frisky." Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /f/ at the beginning of the words. "Fffred's fffurry ffferret fffeels fffrisky." Try it again, and this time break it off the word: "/f/ red's /f/ urry /f/ erret /f/ eels /f/ risky.

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 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 /f/ in work or fun? finger or toe? on or off? Lift or drop? Stiff or sore? Say: Let's see if you can spot the mouth move /f/ in some words. Brush your teeth if you hear /f/: The, funny, furry, bug, flew, far, to, the, pink, flowers.

7. Say: "Let's look at an alphabet book.  Dr. Seuss tells us about a funny creature whose name starts with F.  Can you guess?"  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 Fiffer-feffer-feff, or Footer-flipper-fang. Then have each student write their silly name with invented spelling and draw a picture of their silly creature. Display their work.

8. Show FOG and model how to decide if it is fog or dog: The F tells me to brush my teeth, /f/, so this word is fff-og, fog.  You try some: FIX: fix or mix? MEET: feet or meet? FIND: find or mind? PORK: fork or pork? FAKE: fake or make?