A Slithering Snake Says Ssss… with S (/s/ sound)
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Kassidy McCullough
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Emergent Literacy Design
Rationale: This lesson will help children identify /s/, the phoneme represented by S. Students will learn to recognize /s/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation (slithering of a snake) and the letter symbol S, practice finding /s/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /s/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.
Materials: Primary Paper and pencil; chart with “Sam’s special sandwich smells salty”; drawing paper and crayons. called Wake up, Sun! (Random House Children’s Books, 1986); word cards with SOCK, STICK, MEAT, SING, and CAGE; assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /s/ (URL below).
Procedure: 1. Say: Our written language is a secret code. The tricky part is learning what letters stand for – the mouth moves we make as we say words. Today we’re going to work on spotting the mouth move /s/. We spell /s/ with letter S. S looks like a snake, and /s/ sounds like the snake slithering or saying hello.
2. Let’s pretend to say hello and slither like a snake, /s/, /s/, /s/. Notice where your bottom teeth are? (Hitting the top teeth). When we ay /s/, we blow air through the tiny gap between our two sets of teeth touching.
3. Let me show you how to find /s/ in the word fist. I’m going to stretch fist out in super slow motion and listen for my slithering snake. Fff-i-i-i-st. Slower: Fff-i-i-i-sss-t. There it was! I felt my teeth come together and blow air. I can feel the snake slithering /s/ in fist.
4. Let’s try a tongue twister [on chart]. “Sam’s special sandwich smells salty” Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /s/ at the beginning of the words.” Ssssam’ssss ssssandwich ssssmellssss ssssalty” Try it again, and this time break it off the word: “/S/am’/s/ /s/andwich /s/mell/s/ /s/alty.
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 s. Start just below the fence. Start to make a little curl, like a c half way to the sidewalk and then make another little curl, like a c, but backwards this time all the way down until it curls up on the sidewalk. I want everyone to continue writing 9 more baby s’s just like the one we did together and I am going to come around and check your work.
6. Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /s/ in sock or rock? Mat or sat? Chair or stair? Lift or sift? See or bee? Sell or tell? Say: Let’s see if you can spot the move /s/ in some words. Slither like a snake *wiggle your body* if you hear /s/: The, sun, came, searching, for, some, special, sweet, friends, to, swim, with.
7. Say: “Let’s look at a fun book about a bunch of farm animals trying to get the sun to come out! Let’s read to see what happens and if the sun eventually comes out! This is called Wake up, Sun! (Random House Children’s Books, 1986). This is an alphabet book about all of the different types of animals and how they try and get the sun to come out! It reviews some of the sounds you already know and then the new one we just learned about! Each picture is of all the different animals and I want you to slither like a snake whenever you hear the sound /s/ in the book! At the end of book, ask them to think of a food that starts with the letter/s/ and draw it and give it a name, such as “Sarah, the Sloppy Joe Sandwich!”, then I will ask them to display it for the class.
8. Show SOCK and model how to decide if it is sock or rock: The S tells me to slither my body like a snake, /s/, so this word is sss-ock, sock. You try some: STICK: stick or kick? SEAT: meat or seat? SING: sing or ring? STAGE: cage or stage?
9. For assessment, distribute the worksheet. Students are to match the sailboats to the other pictures of the things that start with s and color all of the pictures that start with S. Call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #8.
References:
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Rutland, Lindsay. "Shirley's Sea Shells"
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/begin/rutlandbr.html
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David L. Harrison, Wake up, Sun!
Harrison, David L, and Hans Wilhelm. Wake up, Sun. Random House, 1996.
Assessment Worksheet: http://www.kidzone.ws/images-changed/kindergarten/s-as-begins1.gif
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