"HiSS"terical Snakes

By:  Shea Fant

Materials:  Masking tape, EXTRA LARGE note cards or poster board, primary paper and pencils, some type of worksheet with pictures of words that have s in the beginning, middle, & end,( If the worksheet is cut and paste as I have modeled below, then GLUE and SCISSORS will be needed),A text containing many words with the phoneme/s/(an example is Summer Fun by:Lucy Lawrence), and lastly  ***a classroom filled with objects have the sound.

Procedure:
1. Introduce the lesson by saying, “Boys and girls, today we are going to pretend to be sly slithering snakes in search of letters that make the same sounds that snakes make.” Next ask the students “what sound does a snake make?”  Have them make the sound several times and tell them to feel the way their mouth moves.  Then explain that snakes do what is called hissing.  Then model the phoneme/s/ for them as the hissing sound that they will be making today as snakes.   Have the word HISS on a poster and have the last two graphemes of s, decorated to look like snakes.  This will help students associate the phoneme with grapheme by a familiar picture.  Then say “boys and girls, let’s say hiss, do you here the snake sound in the word hiss?” “Now, watch me hiss one more time listen and watch my mouth and let’s make sure we are all making the same sound, /s/.”  Then teach the children a tongue twister about snakes.  Six silly snakes slithered sideways.  Then discuss the “snake sound” s=/s/, that they hear in the twister.
2. Have six large “S’s” made out of masking tape on the carpet.  Select six children at a time to go to a large S, and act out the tongue twister.  So you will have six silly snakes slithering sideways around the masking taped S, to feel their bodies make the shape of the grapheme S. Then you can have the children continue to be snakes and hiss around the room in pursuit of 1 object that has /s/ in that objects name.
3. Then have the children share what they have found, and discuss where the phoneme, /s/, is in the word.  For example if someone found scissors it has /s/ in the beginning, middle, and end.  If someone found a bus, explain how you hear /s/ at the end.   *** For a more advanced group, you could even pick up two of an object such as a book and show hem how when you have two or more of something it will usually cause the word to hear /s/ at the end, or something to that affect.
4. It is now time to use an easy book to emphasize the snake sound /s/ in texts.  Introduce a book such as Summer Fun By: Lucy Lawrence, this book contains many words that have the phoneme /s/.  You can introduce the book by saying, “ Boys and Girls, I am going to read you a short story about summer fun and we are still in search of words that make the same sounds as snakes.”  “So, every time you hear a word with the snake sound, hiss /s/ like a snake!” “Ok, Listen closely!!!” For a review exercise, have the children to make a capital and lowercase s, (Ss), on primary paper.   Then model a word with an s in each of the three places, beginning, middle, & end, and have them to copy the words onto their paper.  Then have them write the object they found and underlining the grapheme s, or the phoneme /s/ in their word.  Say For an example “ Ok, Class, if I found a bus, I would write bus on my paper like this: bus  underlining the s because it is where I hear /s/.”  This is the assessment step.  Give them some type of cut and paste worksheet with words that you hear s=/s/ in.  Have one sheet where they cut out the pictures and one with 3 columns. One column beginning, one middle, and one ending.  Then tell them what each picture is and have them say back to you what they are.  Then have them cut out the pictures and place them into the correct column according to where they hear s= /s/ in the word.

Reference: http://www.childfun.com/themes/s.shtml#games

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