Hi!
We ended up getting a bonus snow day from that giant blizzard, and in between shovelling ourselves out, I managed to find some time to finally finish up an activity that I have been wanting to use as a literacy centre for a long time. It may be of interest to you if you are looking for some new centre activities. Presenting… Mots fréquents mystérieux!
During centre time, I really want my students to be practicing as many skills as possible. I also need activities that are easy to differentiate and provide a challenge (but are also do-able!) for all of my students. I am excited to use this activity as part of our stamping station!
Currently at our stamping station, my students have just been practicing stamping their sight word lists. I have enough stations that we don’t stamp every week, but it has definitely been in need of something new and engaging! My students also love playing pretend, and get super into any station that involves imagining they are something else (for example, our sand table is currently a paleontologist centre where they wear safety glasses and use oversized tweezers and paint brushes to search for letters of the alphabet. And it is our favourite centre for sure!). So, we will be playing detective for the next few weeks, magnifying glasses and all!
This centre will be practicing two things – identifying sight words of course, but also working on initial sounds. Most of my students are getting really good at identifying initial sounds, but I still have some strugglers. I am hoping this extra practice helps push them along.
Each worksheet contains multiple secret coded sight words. In order to crack the code and identify the words, students will look at the picture clues. They will stamp the first letter of each clue, left to right, and build the secret sight word. Simple! I have used the same images for each letter that we have on our classroom alphabet and alphabet homework rings, but for those who are still struggling, I have printed out another référentiel that will be placed with the stamps that students can refer to at any time during their centre. We use the same kind of référentiel in our writing folders, so my students are used to checking it.
If you don’t have stamps but want to use this centre, you still can! Just get students to write their sight words with a marker, like this:
Or, laminate the sheets/place them in a page protector and get your students to use white board markers to write on them. Saving on paper is always a bonus!
If this pack looks like something you may need, you can grab it HERE in my TPT store. It comes with 20 different worksheets – 77 common sight words and 12 colour words for a total of 89 words! There are also four options for référentiels, depending on your needs, and an answer key.
I have so many more things I want to tell you about centres, including how I set them up, run them, and organize them. Stay tuned for future posts all about literacy centres! :)
If you are in need of alphabet stamps you can find them on Amazon!(affiliate link)
Nice activity!
Merci!! J'ai hâte de l'essayer demain :)