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Swish like a Squirrel’s Tail with S

An Emergent Literacy Design

Addie Herrlin

 

Rationale: In this lesson, we help students learn to identify the phoneme /s/ which is represented by the letter S. By associating the phoneme and letter with squirrel’s tails, the students learn a meaningful representation between the sound and the letter. Together, we’ll practice finding /s/ in words.

 

Materials: Primary paper; pencil, assessment worksheet; word cards with SAT, MAP, SOCKS, SNAKE, BURN, and SEA; crayons; chart with “Sally sells socks, spoons, and snails.”; an assessment worksheet identifying pictures with /s/ (URL is at the bottom of the page); Squirrel picture with S as tail (link at the bottom of page); Dr. Suess’s ABC (Random House, 1963)

 

Procedures: 1. Say, “Writing our language can be really tricky. It can be hard to understand what different letters stand for. Our mouth and tongues move in certain ways when we say words. One of these sounds we make is /s/. /S/ is what we’re going to learn about today.  The letter S spells /s/.  The sound /s/ sounds like a squirrel swishing his tail, and the letter S actually looks like a squirrel’s tail. (show picture of squirrel with “s” as tail.)

 

2. Now, let’s act like squirrels with tails. Stand up at your desk and shake your tail. /s/, /s/, /s/[Swish your body like you have a tail] Now let’s say /s/ while we shake our tails. See how your tongue touches the top of your mouth? When we say /s/ our tongues touch the tops of our mouths and we blow air out of our mouth. See how you can feel /s/ in desk, like when we swished our tails?

 

3. Watch me show you how we can find /s/ in the word desk. I’m going to say desk  very, very slowly and see if we can listen for the tail swishing. Ddd-e-e-sk. [Slower] Dddd-e-e-e-e-ssssk. I found it! I felt my tongue touch the top of my mouth and I blew air through my lips. I found the swishing tail in desk.

 

4. Okay. Now, let’s try out our tongue tickler on this chart. “Sally sells socks, spoons, and snails..” Let’s say it three times all together. [say the tickler three times] Now, this time when we say our tongue tickler, let’s stretch the /s/ in the beginnings of the words that start with S. “Sssally sssells sssocks, ssspoons, and sssnails.” This time, let’s break the /s/ off from the rest of the word so it’s on its own. “/s/ ally /s/ ells /s/ ocks, /s/ poons, and /s/ nails.”

 

5. Okay, great work. Let’s take out our primary paper and pencils. The letter S spells the sound /s/. Capital S and lower case s look like a squirrel’s swishing tail. So let’s write lower case s on our paper. Put your pencil right at the fence and curve it down like you’re making a little c. Now once you’ve finished the little c, keep your pencil going down so it curves to the right and makes a backwards c. The little s should look like one little c connected to a backwards little c. I’m going to check everyone’s c’s. When I give you a sticker, I want you to continue practicing your little s’s  until you make nine more.

 

6.  Okay, so now everyone stand up at your desks. We’re going to practice hearing /s/ in words. Do we hear /s/ in snake or fan? Sad or mad? More or sand? Let’s try and see if we can note when our mouths move /s/ in some words. Let’s swish our tails if we hear /s/ in these next words! Him, school, bird, snake, snore, blue, scoop, magic, stage.

 

7.  Dr. Seuss’s alphabet book shows us about the letter S. [Read page on /s/, drawing out the sound.] Let’s see if we can think of other words that have /s/. How about sun? You try. [Students suggest words with /s/] Wonderful. Now, I want you all to make up your own silly animal or monster name with /s/. [Have the students invent their own spelling for their creature’s name and draw a picture of their animal/monster. Hang up their work in the classroom.

 

8. [Show the card with SAT and model how to see if it’s sat or mat.] Well, we know /s/ is like a squirrel’s tail and the S in this word tells us to swish our tails, /s/, /s/, so we know this word is sss-at, sat. Now, you try some. MAP: map or sap? SOCKS: mocks or socks? SNAKE: fake or snake? BURN: sun or burn? SEA: pea or sea?

 

9. To assess their learning, hand out the worksheet. The students complete the spellings of the words and color the pictures that start with S. When they come turn in their worksheets, individually ask theme to read the phonetic cue words from step #8.

 

 

 

 

 

 

References/Sources

 

Squirrel: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/b0/17/d4/b017d47bfa776c11fa57c09e6ab0fedf.jpg

 

Worksheet: http://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/s-begins2.htm

 

References:

Example EL Design on Canva-https://sites.google.com/site/carolinesexcitinglessons/home/bob-and-betty-beating-the-drums-with-b

Byrne, B., & Fielding-Barnsley, R. (1990). Acquiring the alphabetic principle: A case for teaching recognition of phoneme identity. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82, 805-812.l

 

 

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