Smiling Snake

Rationale: To learn and spell words, children need to be able to recognize phonemes and see that letters in the alphabet symbolize these sounds. Before children begin to read phoneme they need to be able to recognize them. This lesson will focus on identifying that s=/s/.  My goal for this is to help students recognize, identify, and locate that s=/s/ in spoken or written words. By the end of the lesson the student will also be able to correctly write the letter s.

Materials: Primary paper and pencils, paper strips for tongue twister, smiley face stickers, picture page with snake, dog, car, stop sign, hat, stamp, girl, boy, tree, sail boat,  snake sheet,  and the book The Stray Dog.

Procedures:
1. Introduce the lesson by explaining that there are many different letters in the alphabet and most of them have very different sounds. Today we will be working on the letter s and the sound that it makes. We will be reading, writing, and identifying the letter s, throughout this lesson.
2. Ask the students: Have you ever heard the noise that a snake makes? What sound does it make? That will be the sound we are looking for with the letter s. Today we will learn of the /s/ in many words. Now on three lets make the sound /s/.
3. Lets start off with a tongue twister, “Sam stopped speaking when Sandy started singing”. Now lets sing it again, this time stretching out the /s/ sound at the beginning of each word, just like a snake would. SSSSam sssstopped sssspeaking when SSSSandy ssstarted sssinging. Lets try this one more time, but this time we are going to break off the /s/ sound. /S/ am /s/ topped /s/  inging  when /S/  andy /s/ tarted /s/  inging.
4. Give the students primary paper and pencils. Let’s use the letter s to spell/s/. (I will model how to write the s) Let’s write an s! For s, first form a c cup in the air between the rooftop and the fence, then swing back. I will then walk around and check every ones S, When I put a smiley face on their paper they may start working on a whole role of s’s just like the first one. When you see the letter s by itself in a word, that signal you to say /s/.
5. Next I am going to call on you to give me answers to  my questions and then tell me how you knew the answer. Do you hear /s/ in: stray or play? Swim or trim? Lake or shake? Moon or soon? Set or bet? I will next give each student smiley face stickers to stick on the end of their pointer finger ( to make snake heads). I am going to call out words, when you hear the /s/ sound raise you snake head and make the /s/ sound. ( Give words one by one) Sam, stopped, speaking, when, Sandy, started, singing.
6. I will read aloud The Stray Dog and talk about the story. I will reread the story and ask the students to make their finger snakes and the /s/ sound when they hear the /s/ sound. I will next give them a snake picture and ask them to fill in the snake with words that describe a snake, with inventive spelling.
7. For assessment, I will give each student a picture page. We will name the pictures together, then I will ask the students to write an s underneath the pictures that have the /s/ sound.

Referneces: Eldredge, J. Lloyd. Teaching Decoding in Holistic Classroom. Prentice Hall Publishing Company. Upper Saddle River, Nj: 1995
www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/

Click here to return to Openings.