Rational: For children to learn to read they must be able to learn letter combinations or digraphs.  Children must learn that when certain letters are together in a word they stand for a specific mouth move.  The purpose of this lesson is to teach children to identify the letter combination /sh/.  Children will also learn how to identify its spelling and how it is used  in words.

Materials: Primary paper and pencil, chart with "Shelly is boarding a shp with Shane", picture paper with fish, ship, cat, sheep, jet, shell, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss

Procedures:
 1. Introduce the lesson by explaining that sounds make up words.  "To learn how to read we must learn the sounds the letters make and put the sounds together to make words."
 2. Ask students: "How many times have we gone to the library and when we walk in the librarian says, "Shhh! You're in the library!"  Let's all pretend we are the librarian and students are coming in and they are very noisy.  Let's all say shhh."
 3. "Now, let's try a tongue twister [on chart].  Shelly is boarding a ship with Shane.  Everybody say it three times together.  Now say it again, and this time stretch the /sh/ at the beginning of the words.  Shhhelly is boarding a shhhip with Shhhane."
 4. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil].  "We can use the letters s and h to spell out /sh/.  Let's spell out some words that have the /sh/ sound."
 5. Have the students spell; ship, fish, cash, shop.
 6. Call on students to answer and tell how they spelled each word listed in Step #5.
 7. Read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss and talk about the story.  Read it again and have students raise their hands when they hear words with /sh/.  List   their words on the board.  Then have each student draw a picture of a word that begins with the /sh/ sound.  Have students write a message about their picture using invented spelling.  Display their work.
 8. For individual assessment, call students up one at a time and ask each student to circle the pictures whose names have /sh/ on the picture paper.

Reference: Eldredge, J. Lloyd.  Teaching Decoding in Holistic Classrooms.  Prentice Hall, Inc.1995, pg. 190 (Appendix E)

Dr. Seuss.  One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.

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