If you know me, you know I am TERRFIED of snakes. If I see a snake in the woods, I panic.
My husband thinks I’m nuts, because I don’t want my kids playing in the woods. Even though, I great up playing in the woods.
I’m not even sure how or why my phobia developed, but it’s horrible.
So much so, that I even have a slight aversion to the next reading strategy. Like I tried to think of ways to rename it and make it so it still flowed. This one almost became stretchy snail, but that didn’t quite work, so I stuck with the tried and true.
Snake phobia aside, this strategy is super important.
So read on dear friend and learn how Stretchy Snake has charmed decades of children into become fluent readers.
Who is Stretchy Snake?
Stretchy Snake is like Lips the fish on steroids. With Lips the Fish, we focused on isolating that beginning sound and connecting it with a picture. Stretchy Snake brings the whole word into play as we focus on sounding words out phonetically.
It’s typically the third one I introduce, though I have skipped it and come back to it when I had a class who wasn’t picking up on their letters as well.
To use this strategy, your child is going to need to fluently know all their sounds. Fluently, meaning they say them without hesitation. This is because they will have to quickly take these sounds and blend them together to decode a word. If they are struggling to remember sounds, or say them incorrectly, blending them together becomes nearly impossible.
Picture clues are still very important, as they may mean that your child doesn’t have to sound out the entire word. He may very well look at the picture in the middle of sounding out dog and make the connection before getting to the ending
We spend weeks on this strategy and I usually introduce spelling words around this time as well so we are working not only on blending, but also on segmenting sounds. This strategy will be one of the most heavily relied on strategies for quite some time.
You can grab my Stretchy Snake poster here or by clicking on the image below.
Why is it important?
Stretchy Snake is one of the most important strategies of them all.
That’s because the English language largely follows phonetic rules. Learning how to sound out words unlocks thousands of words that your child can read.
Being able to sound out words has even been proven to help comprehension. Sounding out words helps your child become a more fluent reader. More fluent readers are better able to understand what they are reading because they aren’t struggling to decode words.
How to introduce it
To introduce this strategy, we first have a quick little discussion about snakes. Students typically have a decent amount of background knowledge about snakes. We discuss different types, where they live, what the eat. I try to skip the pictures because they give me the heebie jeebies. We unfortunately have quite a few snakes that are native to our area, so kids usually have a lot of background knowledge about them.
We talk about how snakes can curl up really small (and demonstrate with our bodies) and how they can stretch out really long. I tell them how our friend stretchy snake takes small words and stretches them out l-o-n-g so we can hear all the sounds.
I then pass out rubber bands. These rubber bands will serve as pretend snakes. Before doing anything else, you’re going to want to take to your child about the purpose of this tool and how they are and aren’t to be used. These rubber bands are to help us s-t-r-e-t-c-h out words.
We practice saying the sounds slowly and then blending them together to form the word. We begin with very simple and short CVC words, and don’t try harder words for probably 2 weeks or so.
This strategy requires a LOT of practice. It doesn’t always come naturally to children to be able to “hear” the word when it’s sounded out. My own daughter struggled with blending for a bit. Don’t worry though, it will come with time and patience. Don’t rush it or get frustrated and just practice, practice, practice!
It is extremely important to continue to review the previously introduced strategies. In the beginning, I review them daily. As time goes on, we look at them a couple times a week.
How to practice it
Just like Lips the Fish, there are lots of resources available for practicing stretchy snake. If you do a quick Pinterest search of blending sounds, you’ll find lots of ideas! I’ve got quite a few of them pinned on my own Pinterest boards!
Additionally, I have a few other ideas that I’ve used through the years that my students greatly enjoyed!
- Stretch -It CompetitionThis simple game is my daughter’s favorite. All I do is write 10 words on a white board and add a small T-chart at the bottom to keep score. She gets a point for every word she gets right and I get a point for every word she gets wrong.
Her ability to blend words really took off with this simple activity. She is super competitive by nature and couldn’t stand to lose!
- Guess my wordThis is another super simple way we practice. We do this one a lot in the car, and recently on road trips. It’s our variation of I spy. As we’re driving down the road, I’ll sound out a word I see and she has to guess what I spy.
This game even encouraged her to try and segment words on her own. We haven’t really worked on that skill yet, but she wanted to play so badly, she basically taught herself. She now calls out her own words too!
- Level A-D BooksThe Level A & B books contain lots of decodable words still, but C and D are even more full of words to decode. This is when we start to explore these harder books. I’d recommend having a good grasp on the first 25 sight words before diving into Cs, but with support you could still start without knowing all of them.
There are tons of little decodable readers out there that aren’t leveled. Another good option are the B.O.B. Books. We also have a fun set of Pinkalicious Beginning Readers that my daughter loves. They are a little challenging still, but she will grow into them quickly.
- Matching Game You can use the same cards you created for the Lips the Fish beginning sounds activity for this (you may need to create more). All you need to do is flip them over so they can’t be seen for a quick and easy matching activity. Your child will try to find a picture and word pair by sounding the word out.
There are also lots of cute CVC matching puzzles and games on the market. A quick search of Amazon yields lots of different results.
- Sound it out – Board gameWho doesn’t love a good board game? Just like with our sight word games, you can turn any game into a sounding out game, just with a stack of CVC words. We’ve played Candyland, Trouble, Chutes and Ladders and more! The catch is, if you can’t read the word you lose your turn!
It’s also important for your child to see you modeling sounding out words, so playing a game like this provides the perfect opportunity. Sometimes I “screw up” and let my daughter correct me. She finds this hilarious!
Recommended Books
Below are some of my favorite books to use while teaching this strategy. Don’t forget to check out Amazon’s used books. You can sometimes score some awesome deals that way.
If you’ve missed any of the previous strategies, you can find them here. Tomorrow I’ll be sharing the fourth strategy, Chunky Monkey, as well as more instructional ideas. And don’t forget, through June 14th, we have an amazing giveaway going on. You could win an Amazon gift card for $150! Be sure to check out the details here.
And don’t forget to follow me on Pinterest, where I’m pinning all kinds of great ideas for instruction!
