spring is here

With sunshine, warmer temperatures, and a little rain this past week, it finally felt like spring. I introduced a spring poem early in the week and invited the children to read it together. Following our choral read, they used all that they know to examine the poem closely - circling and underlining blends, digraphs, vowels, sight words and ending rhymes. After working as a whole group, each child used highlighters and black pens to circle and underline noticings on their own small copy of the poem.

Following their independent work we came back together and the children eagerly took turns reading the large poem out loud to their peers. When asked how it felt to read the poem to an audience, the children responded; proud, happy, great. The excitement over highlighting blends and noting long and short vowels continues to amaze me - there is a shared love and curiosity for language in our classroom. So many of our experiences come from the children's interests. Following our morning message work, one child said, "I just LOVE highlighting words!"

The following morning we revisited our poem by using beginning blends to "guess" the covered word. Again, the children engaged in a playful game with language, getting their mouths ready for beginning blends and reading the covered words as they quickly pulled the sticky notes away!