About this activity
Ten /sh/ words: shoe, ship, sheep, shop, shelf, shirt, shake, shine, shore, shed. All start with the target, and all are single syllables, which keeps the difficulty on the sound. /sh/ is made with the tongue further back than /s/ and with rounded lips, which gives you two visible cues to work with.
How to use it in a session
Use the lip rounding, which is visible in a mirror. /sh/ rounds the lips and /s/ does not, and showing a child that difference is faster than describing the tongue position they cannot see. Ask for the word, then a two-word phrase — my shoe, the ship. Eight minutes covers the ten with the phrase level.
What to listen for
Listen for /s/ replacing /sh/, which is the standard substitution and means the tongue is too far forward. Watch shirt and shore, where the following vowel is r-coloured and pulls the tongue back — those two can be easier for a student who is fronting, which makes them a useful place to start rather than a harder one.
Carrying it home
Shoe, shop, shirt and sheep are ordinary words. Asking a family to notice one of them, rather than the sound in general, gives them something specific they can actually track.
Questions
- What ages is this for?
- Kindergarten through third grade.
- Is it free?
- Yes, all ten cards play with no login.
- My child says 'soo' for 'shoe'. What do I cue?
- Lip rounding, which is visible. /sh/ rounds the lips and pulls the tongue back; showing the rounding in a mirror usually gets a closer production than any description of tongue position.