Emergent Literacy

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 sound analogy (snake hissing). Students will also learn the letter symbol S, practice finding /s/ in words and apply phoneme awareness with /s/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words with beginning letters.

Materials: Primary paper and pencil; chart with “Silly Sam said, “Sloth’s sleep sweetly and silently.””; Pamela Duncan Edwards’ Some Smug Slug (Katherine Tegen Books); drawing paper and crayons/markers; word cards with SAP, SONG, SPIN, SIX, FAKE, and RING; assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /s/. (URL below)

Procedures:

1. Say: Our written language is like a secret code. The tricky part is learning what letters stand for – the mouth moves as we make and say words. Today we are going to work on spotting the mouth move /s/. We spell /s/ with the letter S. S looks like a snake and /s/ sounds like a snake hissing.

2. Let’s pretend to hiss like a snake, /s/, /s/, /s/. [Pantomime hissing like a snake] Notice where your teeth are? (on top of each other). When we say /s/, we blow air from our mouth and have our tongue touching the back of our bottom teeth.

3. Let me show you how to find /s/ in the word lost. I’m going to stretch lost out in super slow motion and listen for my hissing snake. Lll-o-o-o-sss-t. Slower: Lll-o-o-o-sss-t There it was! I felt my teeth touch and my tongue touch my bottom teeth and blow air. Hissing Snake /s/ is in lost.

4. Let’s try a tongue tickler [on chart]. Sam likes to be silly. He likes to tell funny stories about his favorite animals. Now here’s our tickler: “Silly Sam said, “Sloths sleep sweetly and silently.”” Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again and this time stretch the /s/ at the beginning of the words. “Ssssilly Ssssam sssaid, “Ssssloths ssssleep ssssweetly and ssssilently.”” Try it again and this time break it off the word. “/S/illy /S/am /s/aid, “/S/loths /s/leep /s/weetly and /s/ilently.””

5. [Have students take out pencil and paper]. We use the letter /S/ to spell /s/. Capital S looks like a snake. Let’s write the lowercase s. Start at the middle of the line and start to make a c up in the air and then swing back. I want to see everybody’s s. After I put a sticker on it, I want you to make five more.

6. Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /s/ in sock or flag? Sip or rim? Star or tooth? Sad or glad? Sun or moon? Say: Let’s see if you can spot the mouth move /s/ in some words. Hiss like a snake if you hear /s/: The, spotty, sour, fish, swam, swiftly, to, the, blue, spring.

7. Say: “Let’s look at an alphabet book. Pamela Edwards tells us about a very smug slug making its way up a slope!” Read page 6, drawing out /s/. Ask them to make up a silly name for a slug like Slumpy-sassy-simone. Then, have each student write out their silly name with invented spelling and draw a picture of their silly named slug. Display their work.

8. Show SAP and model how to decide if it is sap or rap: The S tells me to hiss like a snake, /s/, so this word is sss=ap, sap. You try some: SONG: Song or pong? SPIN: Spin or plan? SIX: Six or fix? FAKE: Fake or rake? RING: Ring or ding?

9. For assessment, students will have a new set of words like #8. Students will have to come to me one by one and recite the words to me.The words will be:

• Stop; Stop or Top?
• Sing; Sing or Ring?
• Sat; Sat or Rat?
• Sleep; Sleep or Creep?
• Storm; Storm or Form?
• Sweet; Sweet or Feet?

References:

Book: Pamela Duncan Edwards, Some Smug Slug

https://www.harpercollins.com/9780064435024/some-smug-slug/

https://mollykubicki.wixsite.com/mysite-2/emergent-literacy-design

Index