Don't Say Pool House!

One of the many misconceptions of teaching is that, if you have nothing better to do, you just give kids worksheets to practice. At least I thought that when I was little. Of course, now I realize giving students busy work isn't one of the best uses of anyone's time, but it should also be said that making/finding worksheets to give students takes boatloads of time. I'm always looking for websites that help create worksheets to practice skills that I know my students need. In fact, I spend so much time creating practice sheets to give to my students so that I can walk around and teach them on their individual levels, that I rarely have time to carefully review each question on each sheet. While grading a worksheet of questions that I had to create particularly fast, I came to an unfortunate realization. This worksheet is a joint practice of reading comprehension and phonics -- a story filled with /p/ words, with comprehension questions at the end. Having only skimmed this story myself, I did not realize that the nice tale of Peter's Pirate Party is held at his parents' home pool, complete with piñata, picnic tables, and pool house. I try to expose my students to diverse cultures, but mostly I want to find texts that reflect my students' races/religions/economics/etc. Can you say the OC visits Chico? Don't say "pool house"!