Sally Snake

Emergent Literacy Design

Abby Smith


Rationale: To learn to read and spell words, children need to understand that letters stand for phonemes and spellings map out the phonemes in spoken words. Before children can match letters to phonemes, they have to recognize phonemes in spoken words. Consonants are an easy phoneme in a word for children to hear.  In this lesson, children will learn to recognize /s/ in spoken words by learning a meaningful representation and a letter symbol, and practice finding  /s/ in words. 

Materials: Primary paper, pencil, book- “Who are you Sue Snue?” , chart paper with tongue twister “Sally Snake sat with seven silly salamanders.”; pictures of things that start with the letter s (salamander, snake, soup, sun, soap), pictures of things that don’t start with the letter s (moon, cup, bear, cat, pen).

Procedures: 1. Introduce the lesson by explaining that 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/.   At first /s/ will seem hidden in words, but as you get to know it, you'll be able to spot /s/ in all kinds of words.

2. Ask students: Did you ever hear a snake say /s/.  That's the mouth move we're looking for in words. Let's pretend to be snakes and say /s/. [Move hand back and forth like a snake moves and make a hissing sound /s/.] Snakes hiss as their way of talking and to warn other animals.  Lets all hiss like snake together /s/.

3. Let's try a tongue twister [on chart]. " Sally Snake sat with seven silly salamanders." Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /s/ at the beginning of the words. " Ssssssally Ssssssnake ssssat with sssseven sssssilly sssssalamanders " Try it again, and this time break /s/ off  the word: "/s / ally /s/ nake /s/ at with /s/ even /s/ illy /s/ alamanders.”

4. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We can use letter s  to spell /s/. Let's write it. First form a tiny c up in the air then without lifting your pencil swing back to the sidewalk.  I want to see everybody write s. After I put a check your s, I want you to make five more just like it. When you see letter s in a word, that's the signal to say /s/.

5. Let me show you how to find /s/ in the word .  I'm going to stretch sock out in super slow motion and listen for the snake to hiss. Sssss-o-ck. Sssss-ooo-ck There it is!  I hear the snake hiss /s/ in sock.

6. Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /s/ in some or few? Glass or cup?  Some or few? Yes or no? [Pass out a card to each student.] Say: Let's see if you can spot the mouth move /s/ in some words.

7. Give a book talk for “Who are you Sue Snue?”  Say: "Sue Snue just had a birthday.  Now everyone wants to know what she wants to be when she grows up.  Everyone wants Sue to be like them. What will Sue do?"  Read Who are you Sue Snue?” and talk about the story. Read it again, and have students raise their hands when they hear words with /s/. List their words on the board. Then have each student draw a picture of what they want to be when they grow up and write a message about it using invented spelling. Display their work.

8. For assessment, distribute the pictures and help students name each picture. Ask each student to circle the pictures whose names have /s/.



Dr. Suess.  Who are You Sue Snue? Random House, 1997.

Elderedge, Lloyd J.  (1995) Teaching Decoding in Holistic Classrooms.   Englewood Cliffs,  NJ: Merrill.

Hall, Mallory.  Silly Sally.


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