Slithering Snakes say SSSsss
Emergent Literacy
By: Nicole Lawyer
Rationale: This lesson will help children
identify the /s/, the phoneme represented by
S. Students will
learn to recognize /s/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful
representation (making a wave with arm) and the letter S by practicing
finding /s/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming
words from beginning letters.
Materials: Primary paper and pencil; word
cards with
SIT, SINK, SUN, TELL, FAT, and SOLD;
assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /s/ (URL link
below), drawing paper and crayons, poster with Silly Sally sings
super sad songs
Procedures:
1. Our language is tricky because we must learn what the letters
sand for and how our mouth is suppose to move in order to form
those sounds. Today we're going to work on spotting the mouth
move /s/. We spell /s/ with the letter
S.
S looks like a
snake, and /s/ sounds like hissing snake.
2. Let's pretend to be a snake, /s/, /s/, /s/. [Pantomime making
a wave with arm] Notice where your teeth are? (Touching teeth).
When we say /s/, we blow air between our teeth.
3. Let me show you have to find /s/ in the word
rest. I'm going to
stretch
rest out in super
slow motion and listen for my snake. Rrr-e-e-st. Slower.
Rrr-e-e-sss-t. Did you hear it? There it was! I felt my teeth
clench together and blow air out between them. I can snake /s/
in rest.
4. Let's try a tongue twister. Silly Sally sings super sad
songs. Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again,
and this time, stretch the /s/ at the beginning of the words.
Sssilly Sssally sssigns sssuper sssad sssongs. Try is one last
time, and this time break it off the word: /s/ illy /s/ ally /s/
ings /s/ uper /s/ ad /s/ ongs.
5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We use
letter
S to spell /s/.
Capital S looks like a snake. Let's write the lowercase letter
s. It is exactly the same as the capital
S except the
lowercase
s is a baby snake. I
want to see everybody's s.
After I put a sticker on it, I want you to make eight more just
like it.
6. Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you
hear /s/ in
stop or
than?
hang or sleep? cake or safe? grow or
spice?
sand or
mean? Say: Let's see
if you can spot the mouth move /s/ in some words. Make an arm
wave if you hear /s/:
The, sassy, silly, girl,
seemed, really, sad, about, something, someone, had, said.
7. Say: Let's look at an alphabet book. Eastman shows us
pictures of things that begin with the letter S. Can you guess what
they might be? Ask the children if they can come up with another
words that begin with the letter S. Ask children to draw a picture of their word
and write a sentence using their word with invented spelling.
Display their word in the hallway.
8. Show SIT and model how to decide if it is
sit or
kit: The
S tells me wave my
arm, /s/, so this word is sss-it, sit. You try some: SINK: sink or link?
SUN: fun or sun? TELL: yell or tell? FAT: fat or sat? SOLD: mold
or sold?
9. For assessment, distribute the worksheet. Students are to
complete the worksheet by drawing lines to items that begin with
the sound of
s. Students are also
expected to color in the pictures of items that begin with the
sound
s. Call on students
individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #8.
References:
Assessment worksheet:
http://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/s-begins1.htm
Covin, Janie. Slithering Sneaky Snakes Say SSSss.
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/doorways/colvinel.htm