This is a guest post by blogger Laureen. If you like what you see here, you can check out her blog, Teach with Laughter, for more of her writing.
Hello Everyone! It’s Laureen visiting again from Teach With Laughter to share with you one of the word work activities that I use in my classroom. Just saying the name Mrs. Wishy-Washy makes me think of the digraph ‘sh’. I would begin by reading a Mrs. Wishy-Washy book and having students point out all the ‘sh’ words. If your students are anything like mine you probably have a few who mix up the sounds of ‘sh’ and ‘ch’ so I created this sorting center.
Here’s a little peek:
To use this activity, you will need to download the two clothesline sorting mats and the twelve t-shirts cards at the bottom of the page, and print them in your choice of color or black & white. On each t-shirt is a picture which begins with either the ‘sh’ or ‘ch’ sound. Students will sort the twelve cards onto the mats then there is a recording sheet to check for understanding.
In my literacy stations I always include a student instruction card to help keep them on task and to decrease the number of times they interrupt me to ask what to do.
This activity could be used with any Wishy-Washy book, but the inspiration for the clothesline came from the cover of Mrs. Wishy-Washy and the Big Wash.
If you use this in your classroom or have other ideas of how you would use Mrs. Wishy-Washy to teach digraphs, please leave a comment on this post.
Laureen is a grade one teacher in Canada. She has been teaching kindergarten and grade one for 22 years, has two children, and enjoys creating hands-on learning activities for her classroom. You can read about more of her activities at her blog Teach With Laughter.
To learn more about the Joy Cowley Collection, click the series highlights image below to download an information sheet with key features. To get today's free activity download (12 pages), click the digraph unit image below!