Uncategorized Archives - Whimsy Workshop Teaching

Sound Wall Grapheme Song Chants

September 24, 2021 by Whimsy Workshop Teaching Leave a Comment

When you are teaching graphemes from the sound wall, the more interactive the better! This post is about using songs and chanting to help reinforce the relationship between graphemes and phonemes on the sound wall.

Cute Sound Wall Grapheme Letters

I use these cute grapheme song cards to help introduce graphemes from the sound wall in a fun and engaging way. The personified letters in each grapheme are holding hands to represent letters working together to create one phoneme or sound. [Read More…]

Setting Up A Sound Wall

August 8, 2021 by Whimsy Workshop Teaching Leave a Comment

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…]

5 Tips for Free Boom Cards

August 23, 2020 by Whimsy Workshop Teaching Leave a Comment

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…]

Directed Drawing Videos: Dinosaur

March 30, 2020 by Whimsy Workshop Teaching Leave a Comment

Have you tried directed drawing with your students? There are so many ways to use it in the classroom!

COMBINE DRAWING AND WRITING

Use your drawings as writing prompts! You can see more photos of the directed drawing activities we use in my classroom by clicking HERE.

USING DRAWING VIDEOS

These directed drawing videos allow you to walk around and assist students while the video plays – much more relaxing than trying to draw and assist at the same time. Just project [Read More…]

Social Skills Stories

March 29, 2020 by Whimsy Workshop Teaching Leave a Comment

Do you use social skills stories in your classroom? One of my favorite things about teaching is sharing books and stories with my students. Even better if students can learn about important topics while they enjoy the stories and characters!

Bunny And Bear Social Skills Stories

This post focuses on our series of books called Bunny and Bear. Bunny and Bear books are social stories which teach essential social skills to young children. My own students immediately fell in love with [Read More…]

Spelling Switcheroo – Word Building

January 10, 2020 by Whimsy Workshop Teaching Leave a Comment

Segmenting and blending sounds can be tricky when students are first learning to read. Reinforcing these skills, particularly with hands-on manipulation of letters, can be a great help for reading development.

Segmenting (separating sounds like /d/ /o/ /g/) and blending (combining sounds like /dog/) are core skills for phonological awareness, and necessary for learning to read.

Assessing Spelling Readiness

Are your students ready to blend and segment sounds? There is a general progression for most students: 1) identifying alliteration and rhyming words [Read More…]

New Year’s Resolutions Writing

January 5, 2020 by Whimsy Workshop Teaching Leave a Comment

Have you ever noticed that, after New Year’s celebrations, when students come back to school after winter break, they act like they’ve never been in a classroom before? Sometimes it seems like they’ve forgotten everything you’ve taught them in the past months!

Of course they haven’t forgotten…but it’s a good time for a refresher! Take some time to remind and re-establish routines and expectations with your students. Review your class rules and even some of the academic goals you reached [Read More…]