Mr. Laskowski

Making words is a hands-on phonics activity where students manipulate letter tiles to form different words. For example, teacher might say, "Change one letter in 'cat' to make the word 'bat', " or a clue may be given such as, "to make the word that baseball players use to hit the ball." We call it building words and Mr. Laskowski is the building-site boss. He shows up with his hard hat and a clipboard with a checklist of "jobs" that need to be done. He talks  with a little Chicago-like accent, or better said, like those guys on the SNL skit that were Chicago sports fans. He says "OK guys" a lot. "O.K. guys it's time to get to work guys. O.K. guys? Are you ready to work guys?

Then Mr. Laskowski goes through the list of "jobs". When the "workers" build the word, Mr. Laskowski gives them praise calling them by Mr. or Miss. "Nice work Miss Marquez." The thing is he can't really pronounce the last names of most of them so he says "Mar-qwez" instead of Mar-kez" When the job is all done, Mr. Laskowski leaves and  tells his guys, "Oh, I see the taco truck. Mr. Laskowski needs a break. I think I'll have a quesadilla today. Then I'll be in the porter-potty if you need me." Now that's FUN, don't tell anyone!