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 (the click of taking a picture with a camera) 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 “Cam’s Cat loves his Color Camera”, Stan and Jan Berenstain’s C is for Clown (HarperCollins Publishers, 1985), word cards for the words CAT, CAR, COOK, CUT, andCUP, FOOL, and BOAT and assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /c/. 

 

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. The /c/ sound sounds like a camera taking a picture. 

 

2. Let's pretend to take a picture with a camera. Get your imaginary camera out and lets take some pictures, /c/, /c/, /c/. [Pantomime taking pictures] Notice where your tongue is (top of the mouth). When we make the /c/ sound, we move our tongues near the back top of our mouth and let out a puff of air. That makes the /c/ sound. 

 

3. Let me show you how to find /c/ in the word car.  I'm going to stretch car out in super slow motion and listen for my camera click sound. Cc-aa-rr. Slower: Ccc-aaa-rrr. I felt my tongue go to the top back of my mouth at the beginning of the word.

 

4. Let's try a tongue tickler [on chart]. Can’s cat was being really cute and Cam wanted to take a photo. When Cam got the Camera, his cat posed. Cam’s cat loves Cam’s color camera.  Here’s our tickler: "Cam’s cat loves Cam’s color camera." Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /c/ at the beginning of the words. "Ccccam’s Ccccat loves Ccccam’s ccccolor ccccamera." Try it again, and this time break it off the word: "/c/ am’s /c/ at loves /c/ am’s /c/ olor /c/ amera.

 

5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We use letter C to spell /c/. Capital C looks like a half circle. Let's write the lowercase letter c. Start at the fence in the corner and draw a curve to the left all the way around to the bottom corner. The same is for uppercase C, except start at the rooftop and draw a curved line to the left all the way to the bottom. Once I put a sticker on your paper, I want you to draw 9 upper case and lowercase C’s. 

 

 

 

6. Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /c/ in car or far? Cut or but? cam or bam? Say: Let's see if you can spot the mouth move /c/ in some words. Take a picture when you hear the /c/ sound. Cam’s, cat, goes, on, runs, on, Cook, street, in, Columbia, California. 

 

7. Say: "Let's look at this book called C is for Clowns"! It follows a fun day at the Circus! Let’s read a couple of pages and draw out our /c/ sounds. Ask children if they can think of other words with /c/. Have students come up with silly /c/ words inspired by the book and have them write them down. 

 

8. Show CAT and model how to decide if it is CAT or BAT: The C tells me to take a picture with my camera, /c/. So, this word is Cccccat, Cat. You try some: Car: Car or Far? FOOL: fool or cool? COOK: cook or book? CUT: cut or but? CUP: Cup or rut?

 

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

 

References

 

Assessment Worksheet Link: https://www.myteachingstation.com/beginning-sound-of-the-letter-c