Stretchy the Word Snake

Do you use Stretchy the Word Snake in your classroom?  Stretchy helps us with words we don't know and he stretches them out and says the word and is a big help to my struggling readers {run on sentence  perhaps?}.  He's a great helper when we are reading in guided reading!  I bought this *not* so cute puppet on Amazon to really go for the gold on this one.

He's completely creepy. My kiddos loved him.  OF COURSE THEY DID! :)

I have students come up and *whisper* a word that stretchy can stretch out REALLY slow and show them how to do it. Then, my students guess the word.  They LOVE it!  Stretchy even stretched out the words Justin Bieber.  :)

After they get the hang of it.  I give them some CVC words to stretch out {idea from Deanna Jump} and write in these writing boxes, so that they can hear each sound.  I laminate them and they use a dry erase marker with them!I got this download from the AMAZING Deanna Jump. You can download it for free on her blog {here}.

As they get better at stretching words out, I give them another mat with 4 boxes.  I made this one and you can download it {here}.

As a quick-check practice during my lower guided reading groups, I give them this assessment that you can download {here}:

Clipart/fonts used with permission from Djinkers.com and are copyright Diane J. Hook