Picture Book Blog #2

Book Title: "Mrs. Wishy-Washy's Farm"
Author: Joy Cowley
Illustrator: Elizabeth Fuller
Publisher: Scholastic Inc., Copyright 2003
Number of pages: 32
Genre: Fiction, Picture Book

Mrs. Wishy-Washy lives on a farm with many farm animals, a truck, and a barn. There is nothing that the animals dislike as much as bathing in the old tin tub that sits next to the barn. After each have their baths, they decide to leave and never come back to Mrs. Wishy-Washy's farm. They go all over the big city and face obstacle after obstacle. When they are all ready to give up, and feeling quite sad, Mrs. Wishy-Washy comes back to save the day. Needless to say, the animals were full of joy and excitement to return to the farm and take nice, bubbly baths in the old tin tub that sits beside the barn.

Elizabeth Fuller, illustrator for this fun little book, did an excellent job. The pictures are simple, yet colorful. The readers are exposed to a drawing of each farm animal that is included in the story. This helps your struggling readers, students with IEPs for reading, and your ELLs. She also includes illustrations of the farm and the city, two places that certain students may never have seen before. If your students grew up in a tiny town out in the country, for example Shelby, Alabama, then they may never have seen a big city. Vice versa, if they grew up in New York City, then they may have never seen a farm. It's ideal when illustrators include drawings of sas many "things" that are included in the tory as possible. This will help the strugglers be able to enjoy and understand the story so much more.

Grade Level: K
Content Area: Reading for Literature
Standard: 2) With prompting and support, retell familiar stories, including key details. [RL.K.2]

With my students, I would begin with a class discussion on farm animals. We would talk about some examples, some of the sounds that they make, where they live, and maybe how they eat. The discussion could follow with a read aloud of "Mrs. Wishy-Washy's Farm." We could have a follow-up discussion about how the students enjoyed the book and what they thought about the story. We could then do a retell of the story by breaking the children into small groups, maybe 4 students or so, and allowing them to use iPads if available. I would provide each group with a set of retell cards and let them take turns videoing each other retelling the story using the retell cards. I could walk around to each group as they are doing this activity, and I can also use the videos as a form of assessment to know if the child is able to retell a story correctly.