Fish and Sheep and Sharks,   oh my!

 

 

 

An Emergent Literacy Lesson

By: Madison Johnson

 

Rationale: This lesson will help children identify /sh/, the phoneme represented by sh. Students will learn to recognize /sh/ in spoken works by learning meaningful representations (finger over mouth to be quiet) and the letter symbol sh, practice finding /sh/ in words, and apply phoneme awareness with /sh/ in phonetic cue reading by distinguishing rhyming words from beginning letters.

 

Materials: Primary paper and pencil; chart with “Shelly sells seashells by the seashore” drawing paper and crayons; Dr. Seuss’s one fish two fish, red fish, blue fish, with FISH, SHEEP, SHARK, SHUT, SHAME; writing worksheet practicing words with /sh/  (URL below).

 

Procedures: 1. Say: Our written language is a secret code. The tricky part is learning what letters stand for­­–the mouth moves we makes we make as we say words. Today we’re going to work on spotting the mouth move /sh/. We spell /sh/ with the letters s and h. /Sh/ sounds like what you say when you’re trying to get a group of people quite.

 

2. Lets pretend to get a group of people quite by putting our finger over our mouth, /sh/, /sh/, /sh/. [Pantomime shushing the group] Notice where your top teeth are? (Touching your bottom row of teeth). When we say /sh/, we blow air through our bottom and top rows of teeth.

 

3.Let me show you how to find /sh/ in the word fish. I’m going to stretch fish out in super slow motion and listen for me getting everyone quiet. Fff-i-i-sshh. Slower Fff-i-i-i-i-sh-sh-sh. There it was! I felt my top teeth touch my bottom teeth and blow out air. I can feel quieting the group /sh/ in fish.

 

4. Let’s try a tongue tickler [on chart]. “Shelly sells seashells by the seashore.” Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /sh/ at the beginning of Shelly and in the middle of seashells and seashore. “Ssshhellyy sells seassshhhells by the seassshhhote,” Try it again, and his time break it off the word: “/sh/ elly sells sea/sh/ells by the sea/sh/ore.”

 

5. [Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We use the letters s and h to spell /sh/. Lets write the lowercase letters sh. For the lowercase s, start at the fence, then make one c going to the left and continue to make another c going to the right going down to the sidewalk. For the lowercase h, start at the rooftop, and then make a straight line going down to the sidewalk, then come back up the line and make a hump at the fence going to the right going back to the sidewalk. I want you to see everybody’s sh. After I put a sticker 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 /sh/ in duck or shark? Shell or rock? Shore or lake? Say: Let’s see if you can spot the mouth more /sh/ in some words. Get the group quite and see if you can her /sh/: shop, glass, ball, ship, shape, that, shoe, sheet, bear, shock.

 

7. Say: “Lets look at one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. Dr. Seuss tells us all about different kinds of fish and how they can all be different. Can you think about how different fish can be?” Read page 1 and 2, drawing out/sh/. Ask children if they can think of other words with /sh// Ask them to make up a silly something a fish can have with /sh/ in it. Then have each student write their silly something with invented spelling and draw a picture of their silly creature. Display their work.

 

8. Show SHELL and model how to decide if it is shell or tell: The SH tells me to quiet the class, /sh/, so this word is ssshh-eell, shell. You try some: SHEET: sheet or feet? SHINE: shine or mine? SHARK: shark or dark?  SHOCK: shock or dock?

 

9. For assessment, distribute worksheet. Students are to complete the partial spellings and color the picture that begin with SH. Call students individually to read the phonetic cue words from step #8.

 

Assessment worksheet: http://www.first-school.ws/t/alpha1_dn/digraph_sh.htm

 

Refrences:

https://sites.google.com/site/haileyshelpfullessons/ski-down-the-slope-with-sh

http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/

 

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