One Sharp Bunch: Poetry Activities for the Primary Classroom

Hi, friends! Can you all believe that today is the first day of spring?! And with spring comes rain... SO. MUCH. RAIN. I always like to teach a unit on rain during the month of April, which coincidently is Poetry Month. We incorporate poetry daily into our shared reading routine. I truly believe that poetry can be utilized to help reinforce a number of literacy skills, such as phonics and phonemic awareness, comprehension and concepts of print. Poetry is also a great way to help build reading fluency. These repeated readings help improve sight word recognition and writing skills, and of course, allow us to use our imaginations. Below, you will find a variety of poetry activities we complete using our "Raindrops" poem!

This rain poem is the perfect way to incorporate poetry activities into your daily lessons this spring! By using a poem of the week, you help build reading fluency, phonics and phonemic awareness skills, comprehension, concepts of print and more! Don’t forget to check out the great poetry writing prompt perfect for creating a copycat poem!

On Monday, I introduce the poem and we add it to our "I Can Read Poetry Binders." The students take these binders home each night to practice reading the poem to their parents. They'll also complete the same activity we completed in class that day at home.

A poetry binder or poetry notebook is the perfect way to incorporate poetry activities into your daily lessons! By using a poem of the week, you help build reading fluency, phonics and phonemic awareness skills, comprehension, concepts of print and more!

We practice making up hand motions for each line:

Raindrops, raindrops (wiggle fingers as you move hands downward)
On the ground (point to the ground)
Raindrops, raindrops (wiggle fingers as you move hands downward)
Splash around (stretch arms above head and move them around and down)
Raindrops, raindrops (wiggle fingers as you move hands downward)
On the street (pretend to drive car)
Raindrops, raindrops (wiggle fingers as you move hands downward)
On my feet (tap feet)
Raindrops, raindrops (wiggle fingers as you move hands downward)
On the tree (stretch arms above head and sway back and forth)
Raindrops, raindrops (wiggle fingers as you move hands downward)
Not on me (use thumbs and point to self)

We also use highlighter tape to highlight the word "on," which is one of this week's word wall words.

On Tuesday, we reread the poem and highlight any remaining word wall words.

On Wednesday, we touch the words as we reread the poem. When we come to a period, we hold our hands out in the stop motion because a period means stop. When we get to an exclamation point, we fist pump in the air because an exclamation point means we have strong feelings. Then, we highlight all of the periods and exclamation points using a different color.

On Thursday, we discuss the -ai vowel team. This is a fairly simple conversation in kindergarten. I remind them that "when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking." We highlight -ai, and I ask "who does the talking... a."

On Friday, we always use the poem to complete an extension activity. For this particular poem, we use the structure of the poem to create a "copycat poem."

You are probably wondering what a copycat poem is. It simply means that we are copying the structure and beat of the original poem to create our own version of the poem... a sort of spin off of the original. I have found that the students are very successful at working together as a class to help create these copycat poems. First, I point out the words that rhyme in the poem. We discuss other rhyming phrases that might work in the poem. As the students are brainstorming, I jot their ideas onto our anchor chart.

After we've created a fairly decent sized list, we read each rhyming phrase using the structure of the "Raindrops" poem:

Raindrops, raindrops,

On the pig.

Raindrops, raindrops,

On my wig.

Raindrops, raindrops,

On the goat.

Raindrops, raindrops,

On my boat.

Raindrops, raindrops,

On the mouse.

Raindrops, raindrops,
On my house.

and so on....

Each student selects a pair of rhyming phrases to write for our own "Raindrops" poem. I insert these pages into sleeve protectors inside a binder. We now have our very own "Raindrops" poem and class book!

If you'd like to give these poetry activities a try in your classroom, you can find them in my I Can Read April Poetry Binder. This pack comes complete with a poem for each week, weekly lesson plans, pocket chart cards, and extension activities, as well as an at-home connection... enough to keep the poem going all week long!