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Rationale: This lesson will help children identify /sh/,the phoneme represented by Sh. Students will learn to recognize /sh/ in spoken words by learning a sound analogy (holding finger up to mouth like a librarian) 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.
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Materials: Primary paper and pencil; Sheep in the Shop by Nancy Shaw (1991); word cards with SHOE,SHAE, SHE, POT , SHOP, and MINE; picture of /sh/ phoneme; “Circle it” Worksheet Assessment Activity (URL below).
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Procedures:
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Explain that every letter has a sound and sometimes when you put two letters together they make a different sound. For example, S says /s/ and h says /h/ and put them together Sh says /sh/. We spell /sh/ with the letters s and h. Think about when your mom tells you shhh be quiet and puts her finger like so (module the sh).
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Lets pretend to be a librarian in a very loud library /sh/, /sh/, /sh/. Notice what our teeth and lips are doing? Your lips pushed out. When we say /sh/ we are blowing out air and our tongue is not resting on the bottom of our mouth.
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Let me show you how to find /sh/ in the word fish. I am going to say the word in super slow motion and you listen for the librarian /sh/. Fff-ii-sh. Slower: Fff-iiii-ssssshhhhhhh. There it is!I felt air blow between my teeth and my lips poked out. I found the librarian’s /sh/ in fish.
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Lets try the tongue tickler. Shelly has just gone shopping with her friend Sheela. They pass the ocean and see four sheep on a ship! The sheep call out to Shelly and want to know what she got. So Sheela says “Shelly should show sheep on the ship her shark shirt.” Everybody say it three times together. Now say it again, and this time, stretch the /sh/ at the beginning of the words. “Sshhelly sshhould sshhow sshheep on the sshhip her ssshhark sshhirt.” Try it again, break it off the word: “/Sh/ elly /sh/ ould /sh/ ow /sh/ eep on the /sh/ ip her /sh/ ark /sh/ irt.”
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[Have students take out primary paper and pencil]. We use letterss and h to spell /sh/. Capital S looks like a big, sneaky snake. Let’s practice writing capital S. We’re going to put the head of our snake S at the rooftop and then curve it going down the left to make our first hump. Then at the fence we’re going to make another hump going to the right and ending at the sidewalk. You try it! After I put a smiley face next to it, please write it three more times. [After the capitalShas been written] Now we’re going to try lowercase s. We’re going to do the same thing that we did for the capital S, except the head of the snake is at the fence. You make a small curve to the left and then a small curve to right, finishing with the tail at the sidewalk. Give it a try! After I put a smiley face next to your lowercases, write it three more times. Let's write the lowercase letter h. Start just below the rooftop. Draw a straight line all the way down to the sidewalk, then without picking up your pencil, draw a line back up to the fence. Make a curve at the fence, away from your first line, then continue the curve to make another straight line back down to the sidewalk. You try! After I put a smiley face next to your lowercase h, write it three more times.
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Call on students to answer and tell how they knew: Do you hear /sh/ in shoe or blow? wish or pick? share or care? shop or fight?shoe or sock? Say: Let's see if you can spot the mouth move /sh/ in some words. Hold up your finger to your lips like a librarian if you hear the /sh/ sound in these words /sh/: she, fix, bang, shovel, paper, swish, paint,chair, shine, dishwasher.
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Say: “Let’s look at a book called Sheep in a Shop. Nancy Shaw tells the story of a group of sheep who are off to the store in search of the perfect birthday gift - what will they find?, let's read and find out!” Have the student draw out the /sh/ words from a few pages.
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Show SHOP and model how to decide if it is shop or top: The Sh tells me to be a librarian, /sh/, so this word is sshh-op, shop. You try some: SHAME: shame or blame? POT: shot or pot? SHOE: glue or shoe? MINE: mine or shine? SHE: she or he
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For assessment, distribute the worksheet. Students circle the corresponding word with the pictures that contains Sh.Then students practice writing the words. Call students individually to read their answers after everyone has completed the worksheet.
References:
Lauren Ayres, Sweeping with SHHHH.
https://laa0020.wixsite.com/laurenaayres/emergent-literacy
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Assessment Worksheet (last page):
https://www.scholastic.com/ems/Classroom_books/061912/images/PHONICS-Diagraph-pages.pdf
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