Silly Sally's Pet Snake

Rationale: Letter recognition is an essential component to children’s literacy. By recognizing letters in print, they can relate them to their corresponding sounds.The best place to start with emergent readers is introducing those letters as symbols and teaching the sound/sounds that associates with them. In our lesson today we will be learning about s and the sound /s/. We will practice writing our letter in upper and lower case so we can identify it when we see it in print. I want the children to identify the letter s when it is written and the sound /s/ when it is heard and also identify this letter in a group of objects, some with the letter and some without.

1. Explain Why: I will talk to the children and inform them on why we are doing this lesson. I will tell them that we are learning the letters and the sounds that go with them. "Today we are going to learn about a sound and a letter that goes with that sound. When I think of peanut butter, I might think of jelly. Just like the relationship we made with peanut butter and jelly, we need to learn to make that association with the letters and the sound/sounds they make. For example, b=/b/, l=/l/ and today we will be learning about s=/s/." By doing these lessons, they are helping us become better readers.

2. Review: We will begin our lesson by reviewing our previously learned letters/sounds. This review would include all of the letters up to the letter s. We will discuss each letter; the sound it makes and we will give an example of a word that starts with that letter. For ex. F=/f/, feet, fall, flamingo.

3. Explain How: I will introduce our letter s and teach the sound it makes. I will write the letter in my dry erase board so the children can see. We will look around our room and find as many things that start with /s/ as we can.

4. Model: We will look in a mirror and see how our lips are shaped, our teeth are together and out tongue is flat and right behind our teeth. We will say a tongue twister and do a motion every time we hear the sound /s/. Sam said he was sorry he put salt in Sally's sandwich. Our motions is putting our hands together and moving them like a slithering snake.

5. Simple Practice: Next we will learn how to make our letter by writing it on primary paper. We will write it in upper case and lower case. For upper case: we will talk about how it is a little c from the rooftop to the fence and a backwards little c from the fence to the sidewalk. For lower case it is the same thing but you start at the fence and finish at the sidewalk. Don’t let the snake break. We have to help it slither in one motion. I will have the students write them both ten times to give them lots of practice. I will walk around to make sure they are all writing correctly. Once they have finished writing, I will ask the students some questions to get them to identify the sound /s/. Do you hear /s/ in sad or mad. Do you hear /s/ in sand or band. Do you hear /s/ in star or moon. Do you hear /s/ in silk or milk.

6. Whole Texts: I will put some sentences on the board that have the letter s in them and we will read them as a whole class. "I see sweet sugar cookies that are so yummy to eat. Will Sam swim in the ocean with him suit on?" Whenever they hear the sound /s/ they have to slither their snake using their hands. We will also read Secret Seahorse by Stella Blackstone. They will also do the snake with their hands when they hear the s in the book.

7. Assessment: I will hand out a worksheet to all the students and have them get out their crayons. This sheet has all kinds of objects on it like stars, moon, snail, sock, lamp, tree, ect. The children will color the objects that they hear a /s/ in. I will take this up to see how well the children did identifying the objects with /s/.