Emergent Literacy Lesson

Slither Like Sammy the Snake With S.

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 like Sammy the 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,
Poster with tongue tickler reading “ Six small slick seals swimming,”
Visual aid with Sammy the snake slithering,
Word cards with SAT, SAND, SNAKE, LATE, and HOP,
Dr. Seuss’s ABC (Random House, 1963),
Assessment worksheet identifying picture that begin with /s/.

Procedures:

Say: Today we are going to learn a new sound. The sound that we are going to learn today is /s/. We spell /s/ with the letter S. S looks like Sammy the snake when he is slithering around on the ground and S sounds like Sammy when he hisses.
Let’s pretend to slither like Sammy the snake (students move there arm in a curved motion like a snake body does until the teacher says to stop). Notice where your teeth are? (Point to teeth). When we say /s/, we put our top and bottom teeth together and blow out air between them.
Let me show you how to find /s/ in the word mask. I am going to say mask very slowly and I want you to list for Sammy the snake’s hiss. Mmm-aaa-ssss-k. There it was! I put my bottom and top teeth together and blew out. I could hear Sammy hissing.
Let’s try a tongue tickler (on poster). “Seven slippery snails slurped down smoothies.” Everyone say it together three times. Now say it again, but this time stretch out the /s/ sound at the beginning of the words. “sssseven sssslippery ssssnailssss ssssslurped down sssssmoothiessss.” Now try it one more time, but this time break off the word: “/s/even /s/lippery /s/nail/s/ /s/lurped down /s/moothie/s/.”
(Have students take out primary paper and pencil) Now let’s learn how to print the letter S. Sammy the snake looks like an S when he slithers. Let’s start with lowercase s. Start just below the fence. First form a tiny c up in the air between the fence and the sidewalks, then swing back. I’m excited to see your own letter s’s! (Teacher walks around and observes children’s progress.)
Call on students to answer the questions and have them tell how they know the answer is correct: Do you hear /s/ in sea or gulf? Yes or no? sad or mad? Sleep or awake? Let’s see if you can spot the mouth move /s/ in some words. Slither your hand like Sammy the snake if you hear /s/ in some words: small, kite, red, sell, late, sorry.
Say: “Let’s look at an alphabet book. Dr. Seuss tells us about this boy who drank too many sodas. Has this ever happened to anyone of you all? Do you all know what will happen? Let’s find out and see!” Read the s page, drawing out /s/. After read aloud say: “What were some of the /s/ words you heard? What kind of soda do you think Sammy Slick might have gotten from? After they have answered and discussion, ask students to draw a picture of foods or sodas that they like that have the letter s in them but if they ate too much of it, it might make them sick like Sammy slick. After they write the word they can draw a picture and color it.
Show SHAKE and model how to decide if it is SLICK or RICK: The s tells me to slither like Sammy the snake, /s/, so this word is ssss-lick, slick. You try some: SAT- sat or rat? JAIL- sail or jail?
For assessment, hand out worksheet. Students are to say the picture that is given to themselves and find the /s/ sound. Then they are to practice writing the letter s. While working on working on worksheets, the teacher can call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step 8.

Resources:

Book: Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss’s ABC. Random House Beginner Books, 1963. Print

Worksheet: http://www.kidzone.ws/prek_wrksht/learning-letters/s.htm

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