Hameray Classroom Literacy Blog

Retelling with Mrs. Wishy-Washy—with FREE Download!

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 from  Teach With Laughter . As a huge fan of Joy Cowley, I am so excited to be here! I have taught kindergarten and grade one for the past twenty-two years, and Mrs. Wishy-Washy has always been one of my favorite read-alouds, so you can imagine my excitement when I found out that there are leveled books too!

Here’s a peek at a few of the books I’ve been using in my classroom the past 2 weeks.

These books are leveled G and I. I have one copy of each book, which makes them perfect for "reading to self," "reading to someone," or for a read aloud.

I chose to use these books for "reading to someone." I had the students read together with a particular focus on using expression. A few of them even counted how many exclamation marks there were in the book they were reading.

We’ve been doing a lot of talking about story elements including characters, setting, story order, problems and solutions. Using a retell spinner is perfect for this.

To use this activity students use a paper clip and pencil to create a spinner, they spin the spinner and tell their partner all about the story element they landed on.

You can download this spinner for free at the bottom of the page! I hope that you enjoy this story elements activity! Come back to visit soon to learn about more ideas of how I use Mrs. Wishy-Washy in my classroom.

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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 .

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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, click the image of the spinner below!