Whimsy Workshop Teaching

Whimsy Workshop Teaching

Teacher Clip Art, Literary Resources, Classroom Ideas

Sound Wall Quick Activities

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This post answers the most common questions I have received about quick daily activities to use with a sound wall. I hope the answers in this quick guide are helpful to you!

Sound Wall Activities

Question: What are some quick activities to use with a sound wall?

Answer: Here are some quick ideas to reinforce phonemes:

Activity 1: Invite students to become Phoneme Detectives and hunt for focus phonemes in short books. This activity is particularly effective with a partner.

Activity 2: Make personal [Read More…]

Sound Wall: Consonants

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This post answers the most common questions I have received about arranging consonants on a sound wall. I hope the answers in this quick guide are helpful to you!

Sound Wall: CONSONANTS

Question: How are consonants represented on a sound wall?

Answer: Consonants are categorized as nasals, stops, fricatives, affricates, liquids and glides, as shown below. These categories refer to the way the sound is made. For example, some sounds are formed with bursts of air, while others are a smooth sound. [Read More…]

Sound Wall: Teaching Tips

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This post provides teaching tips to use with your sound wall. I hope the answers in this quick guide are helpful to you!

Teaching Tip 1: Take It Slow

Question: How should I introduce my sound wall?

Answer: Very slowly! A completed sound wall (especially with word cards) can be overwhelming for students. I like the idea of covering most of the posters with a “lock” picture, then revealing the phonemes as they are directly taught. Even after revealing the poster, you [Read More…]

Sound Wall Vowel Valley

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This post answers common questions about arranging vowel posters in a vowel valley on a sound wall. I hope the answers are helpful to you!

PHONEMES & GRAPHEMES

Question: How are phonemes and graphemes represented on a sound wall?

Answer: A sound wall is visual reference for students where each of the 44 phonemes in the English language is represented by an anchor picture and graphemes connected to that sound.

VOWEL VALLEY

Question: Why are vowel posters in a V-Shape on the sound wall?

Answer: [Read More…]

Setting Up A Sound Wall

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Making Sense of Vowel Valley

When I first saw a sound wall I was …confused. After teaching reading intervention for 25 years, I didn’t understand why letters were posted in a V-Shape. I also wondered why there were pictures of mouths everywhere! Fast forward to the present time… I now view sound walls as an integral part of reading and writing instruction. I’d like to share with you what I’ve learned so far.

PS: You can download a free quick guide [Read More…]

7 Socially Distanced Learning Activities in Primary

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Here’s another bunch of socially distanced learning activities that you can use in a primary classroom. You can see the first 8 ideas in this previous post! These are activities I used with my student when we went back to in-class teaching, but still had to maintain social distancing rules. These are chosen for simplicity, lack of prep needed, and student engagement!

Socially Distanced TARGET GAMES

I was talking to a student recently who told me about how her family loved going [Read More…]

8 Socially-Distanced Learning Activities

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There are many fun teaching activities that we can do while still keeping students socially-distanced! With a bit of creativity there are a lot of adaptations we can make – preferably with very little preparation. I’ve listed eight activities below (and seven more here) that were popular in my classroom when we went back to in-person teaching!

Socially-Distanced OUTSIDE PHONICS

Unless it was pouring rain, we spent as much time outside as possible. A lot of learning happened out there! We made [Read More…]

5 Tips for Free Boom Cards

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Confession time: When I first heard of Boom Cards my thought was, “I can’t learn another new thing right now!” But when distance learning became a reality, I decided to give myself 20 minutes to read and learn, and then decide if it was something I wanted to try.

Guess what? TOTALLY worth my time! And I think there’s a good chance you might agree with me! I’m going to break it all down into a few small steps so [Read More…]

Stories To Teach Social Skills

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Stories are the perfect way to teach social skills and introduce new concepts. This post focuses on 16-Week Social Skills Program that features silly monsters who explore and illustrate essential social skills topics.

Each story has 5 lessons included, plus a printable version of the book for your classroom library! No need to hunt down the book to match the lessons – it’s all included in this engaging K-2 curriculum.

Monster Social Skills Stories

My students love everything about monsters, whether they [Read More…]

Online Stories for Distance Learning

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As more and more of our teaching involves online learning, I’ve realized that I have to get super organized with my online resources. This includes my huge collection of online stories! Here’s how I’m keeping everything simple and organized this year:

Grab this FREE clickable templates below!

Organizing Online Stories

Google Slides is the perfect way to build a virtual class library, and it’s a fun way to visually store all of the stories you share with students. Each one of the books [Read More…]

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