EL Design

Emergent Literacy Design: Hissing like a snake with the letter "S" 

Rationale: This lesson will help children identify /s/ the phoneme represented by S. b Students will learn to recognize /s/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation (hissing like 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 "Sandy the snake slithers to see her sister"; drawing paper and crayons; Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (Archambalt, Martin, 1989) word cards with SEAT, SAT, DEEP, SING, TAPE, SING; assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /s/. 

Procedures: 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 a snake hissing. 

2. Let's pretend to hiss like a snake! /s/, /s/, /s/. [Pantomime hissing] Notice where your tongue is? (Touching the back of the teeth). When we say /s/, we blow air between your top teeth and lower 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 toothbrush. Lll-o-o-st. Slower: Lll-o-o-o-sss-t There it was! I felt my teeth touch my tongue and blow air. I can feel the hissing /s/ in lost. 

4. Let's try a tongue twister [on chart]. " Sandy the snake slithers to see her sister" Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /s/ at the beginning of the words. "Sssandy the sssnake ssslithers to sssee her sssister" Try it again, and this time break it off the word: "/s/ andy / s/ lithers /s/ ee /s/ ister 

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 letter s. Start just 

below the rooftop. Start by making a little "c" on the fence and then go all the way between the fence and the sidewalk, then make another loop going the opposite direction that finishes at the sidewalk. I want to see everybody's s. After I put a smile on it, I want you to make nine more just like it. 

6. Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /s/ in leap or sock? singer or box? Bake or saw? salt or drop? Stiff or cake? Say: Let's see if you can spot the mouth move /s/ in some words. Hiss if you hear /s/: The silly shark sat on the sad seagull. 

7. Say: "Let's look at an alphabet book. "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom is about a coconut tree that has a bunch of letters trying to live in it!" Read page 19, drawing out /s/. Ask children if they can think of other words with /s/. Ask them to make up a silly creature name like Sisser-sissy-sass, or Sippy-Sister- Sang. Then have each student write their silly name with invented spelling and draw a picture of their silly creature. Display their work. 

8. Show SAT and model how to decide if it is sat or rat: The S tells me to hiss like a snake, /s/, so this word is sss-at, sat. You try some: SEAT: seat or meat? DEEP: sleep or deep? SOOT: soot or foot? SAD: sad or mad? SING: sing or bring? 



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e-mail Bailey Burns: bmb0054@auburn.edu