Time For Spring Poem & Guidebook

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Time For Spring

When we say so long to the ice and snow, Its time for spring to say, HELLO! April rain will make some mud. Look at trees, youll see them bud. We clear the garden to make room, For all the flowers soon to bloom. When the sun warms up the frozen ground, Its time for spring to come around! Put coats and sweater all away. Its time to go OUTSIDE to play! A lightweight jackets all you need. To watch the birds come back to feed. Listen to the sounds of spring, Bees will buzz and birds will sing. And those who snuggled dark and deep, Will soon wake up from winters sleep. Springs a time to hunt for eggs. Or watch a calf with wobbly legs. Animal babies are born with care. Outside, its GREEN everywhere! Look around for new life, new birth. As the sun begins to warm the earth. Everything, again, begins to grow. YES! Its Spring time! Now you know!

Introduction
This spring poem, just in time for the season and Aprils poetry month, is very appropriate for the Smart Board because it can be blown up and analyzed deeper in order to do a close read. This is a Teachers Guide to go with the poem, offering the inquiry, ideas, and activities that can be implemented. Feel free to pick and choose what you want to include in the study of the poem. This poem was written by Kathi Flynn from a digital content company, i Cubed Curriculum. Content here is being developed for the Smart Board, iPad, and other tablets that is non-fiction, digital, and, of course, interactive. This poem and Guide book are offered for free in the Shop for teachers. However, this is really just a sampling of the Time For Spring Smart Board Unit, now offered on sale in the Teachers Store. This unit includes the poem, but this time, each line of the poem has its own page with a photograph. On those pages, the unit also provides enrichment with extra information that comes in the form of an avatar with a childs voice! Children will love to listen to the avatar girl, Melony, who is both engaging and entertaining. For example, on the line of the poem where the birds are coming back, Melony talks about migration and why some birds migrate and some do not. Because the poem is simple and the non-fiction information is more complex, it is completely differentiated and appropriate for students as young as preschool and as old as 2nd grade. In addition, there are lessons for each subject area with vocabulary so it becomes an interdisciplinary unit that can be revisited over several weeks. You can see the literacy connection with the poem. But in addition, this unit dives deeper into science topics of migration, hibernation, tree and plant life cycles, weather and temperature, animal adaptations, social studies topics including natural resources, holidays, traditions, climate, and geography, and math topics including graphing, word problems, and calendar math. There are many interactive Smart Board pages for these topics where children will get a chance to sort, match, sequence, erase to reveal, label, and fill in graphic organizers. Of course, there is also a Teacher Guide Book included with this Unit to further explain and provide critical thinking questions and developmental and concluding activities. The Time For Spring Smart Board Unit was specifically developed to teach about the environment with photographs. This makes it stand apart from many other units where clip art and illustrations are used and allows students to make a stronger connection to what they are learning. Along with HD photography, students will also be captivated by time-lapse videos of snow melting and a tree budding, and get the opportunity to actually listen to the sounds of those bees and birds from the poem. Look for the unit in the store and take advantage of its special sale!

Close Reading of the Poem

Objective: Students will be able to analyze the poem, Time For Spring, and answer critical thinking questions. Close readings have become strongly encouraged in todays classroom in order to meet the standards and initiative of Common Core. This chapter will give you specific guidelines and mini-lessons for implementing a close reading of the Spring Poem in the unit. In a close reading, students are observing facts and details about the text in order to analyze it on a deeper level and reach a higher level of understanding. This will allow them to make interpretations and inferences about the text, and thus, become better readers. In close reads, a piece of work is usually read three times. This will allow for better familiarity with the poem and all of its elements. Read-aloud the poem two times, slowly, and have the students read with you a third time, if they are able to chime in. Older, more skilled readers in first and second grade may be able to do a second reading of the poem in a partner relationship where they can read to each other, discuss, and later share their ideas with the group. If you have students on the Preschool or Kindergarten level, you may want to invite them to just chime in on the rhyming words in the third read. Close readings should also include a wide array of inquiry and you can use Blooms Taxonomy as a guideline to move from text based or right there questions to inference or critical thinking questions. Read the poem at least two times before any questions are asked. Text based questions are a great way to start out. Then, you may visit more synthesis and evaluative type questions after a third or fourth read. All students who answer a question need to go back into the text to show evidence in order to support their answers. Always ask, Where in the text did you find that? or What were the text clues that helped you find your answer? The following sub headings were created to focus on different reading components that can be analyzed with this poem. Each heading includes an objective, questions, and a follow-up activity (if applicable). They can be treated as mini-lessons if that is more appropriate for your time blocks. Things that you could say as a teacher to your class will always be in quotes. Possible answers from students will be typed in italics. Main Idea Students will be able to state the main idea of the poem verbally or in writing. They will be able to summarize what the poem is mainly about. What you could say to the students: Remember that the main idea is what the story or poem is mostly about. It is what the author is trying to tell us or teach us with his writing and it can usually be summed up in one sentence.

What is the main idea of the poem, what is it telling us? What is the poem mostly about? Things we can do in the spring, changes that happen in the spring. Supporting Details Students will be able to identify the supporting details of the main idea verbally and gesturally by pointing to various lines of the poem. What details support the main idea? What are some of the changes that happen in the spring? Snow melts, trees bud, flowers bloom, birds come back and sing, animals wake up, animal babies are born, nature gets greener, air feels warmer, we can play more outside. Draw a spring picture that shows at least two of the supporting details. Characterization Students will be able to identify character traits verbally by using text clues in the poem. What you could say: Characterization is a method of finding out about a character by looking at all types of clues in the dialogue, setting, and supporting text. We can make inferences or assumptions about the character by looking at these clues. In this poem, we can make decisions about the character that is narrating, or talking, by looking closely at what the character is saying. The character here is using the words, I, me, and my which means there is a first person narration; the character is talking about himself/herself. What do we know about the character? How old do you think he/she is? Is he/she a child or a grown-up? How can you tell? He/she is a child. Evidence from the poem: he/she jumps in the mud, plays outside, hunts for eggs, visits a farm to see the animals. Yes, the character is definitely a child, probably about your age, old enough to play and talk about all of the things he/she likes about the season. Do we know if the character is a boy or girl? No. The poem makes us think about the things we like to do or the things that may happen to us when the season changes. How many of the girls like doing the same things as the character in the story? How many of the boys? Why do you think the author wrote it so that the character could be a boy or a girl? So that both boys and girls could relate to the poem. Does the character like the Spring? How can you tell? Yes, there is excitement, exclamation points used for playing outside and hunting for eggs. Also, at the end, he/she says Yes!

Youre going to draw a picture of what you think the character of the poem looks like. Think of one thing that you liked that the character in the poem liked or did. Draw the character and yourself doing that activity together in your picture. Remember to add details to your drawing. Imagery Students will be able to identify the imagery words used in the poem verbally, or in writing by circling/ highlighting these words. Students will be able to apply the imagery words from a line of the poem to a picture by illustrating it. What you could say: Imagery words are words used in text that really help the reader to draw a picture in his/her mind. They are details that help the story come to life. Good authors do not need illustrations or photographs to accompany their text if they can tell the words in the right way to help you draw your own imaginary pictures. Using imagery helps readers form a better understanding of what they are reading. Assign every student one line of the poem to illustrate. Have them write the line of the poem and draw a detailed picture to go with this line. They should then share their pictures and discuss how the imagery words helped them. If you have a Document Camera or Viewer, you can show or scan each illustration to the Smart Board to look at each one as a class. These pictures could then be put together to make a class quilt or bound book. Later, when you read the poem again in the book/notebook lesson, compare the photography to this class book. How is the class book similar to the poem in the unit? How is it different? Find/circle/highlight the sensory words used in the poem as a class or as a partner activity. Use a different color highlighter for the different senses. You can discuss each one at a time or altogether. You can use a large T-chart on page 5. For right now, fill in one side with the words that come from the poem. Later, the students can add some of their own words for other things they could see, feel, hear, smell, or taste in the spring. This brainstorm will be an organizer for a follow-up activity, creating sensory books for spring. Students will write and illustrate their own sentences that show how spring can stimulate each of their five senses. This can be done in flip book or other creative format. What is the character seeing in the spring? Snow melting, trees budding, flowers blooming, birds in the trees, animal babies, GREEN! Touching/feeling? The warm air on his/her skin, lightweight jackets, flowers and soil or eggs in their hands. Hearing? Rain, Shovels digging, Birds singing, bees buzzing

Smelling? Flowers, Animals at the farm Tasting? "Although it is not directly written in the poem about tasting different foods, what can you begin to taste again in the spring that may be different from the winter?" BBQ food, ice cream from the ice cream man. Text Based Questions Students will be able to show comprehension of the text by answering text based questions and using the text as evidence. Be sure students go back into the poem to find these answers. Always ask, How do you know? Where did you find that answer? (These questions are purposely written in a random order.) What is growing in the poem? What does the narrator do to celebrate Easter? Where do the flowers bloom? What kinds of clothing are mentioned in the poem? What does the narrator listen to in the spring? "What is another word for spring?" Inference Questions Students will be able to show comprehension of the poem by answering inference questions verbally or in writing. Inference questions, unlike text based questions require students to think deeper and more critically about the text. They may have to use a combination of prior knowledge, analysis of how specific words are used, and synthesis of clues and evidence from the poem. The answers will not be right there within the text. Instead, children will derive the answers through a sequence of steps. This is one of the main objectives of common core; to encourage and create opportunity for deeper analysis and thinking. What season ends before spring begins? Think about what the narrator is saying goodbye to." Winter is ending, he/she is saying so long to the ice and snow. Why is a lightweight jacket all you need? What else can we put away besides sweaters?" The weather is getting warmer, we do not have to wear heavy layers or coats. We can also put away gloves, hats, and scarves.

Why does the author have to clear room in the garden?" Over the winter, the garden areas may have dried leaves, dead grass, weeds, and/or sticks. These all need to be cleared away to get ready for planting. Does this poem mainly talk about things that happen inside or outside? Why do you think the author decided to write it this way? Outside. Because talking about a season should include all the things that are changing around us and most of those changes are happening outside, with the plants, animals, and weather.

Creative Response to the Poem

Students can respond to the poem in a couple of ways. Have them brainstorm a list of things they can now do in spring, that they may not have been able to do in winter because the weather was too cold. The poem says, Its time go outside to play! What do you like to do outside in the spring? Use page 7 to record student answers. Once students have chosen at least one activity, they can write and illustrate it as a poster, blank page, or even digitally on the computer. Even if your younger students are not yet writing, they may be able to type their sentence, have an assistant scribe it, or even record or video tape their response. In addition, you can have them discuss and respond about the changes that are happening in the spring. There are many clues in the poem that tell what the trees, plants, birds, and animals are doing, in addition to us. Use the graphic organizer on page 8 to help brainstorm ideas. Have them go back to the poem to find evidence. They may have to make inferences. Where do you think the birds are coming back from? What is called when birds go to warmer places in the winter? What makes them come back? Migration. They come back to feed feed on worms, bugs, and seeds. What begins to grow? What makes the outside space look so green? Leaves, flowers, plants, shrubs, and grass. All of these things are green. (Flowers have green leaves.) Why are animals waking up? What is called when animals go to sleep in the winter? What do you think they need to do when they get up? What else is happening to animals? Hibernation, some animals wake up from hibernation in the spring. They will need to eat and many that eat plants will now have new plants to eat. Many of them also have babies.

What is happening to the temperature? What happens to the ground (and snow) when the temperature goes up? What kinds of weather will we get in the spring? Temperatures begin to rise, the ground warms up, snow and ice melt. We wont have any more snow but we can have rainy, windy, sunny, and cloudy weather. You can make a 4 square piece of paper where students illustrate one change for each box or they can choose one change to respond about. Once again, this can be done on the computer where students can type and find pictures to cut and paste instead of illustrating. Coloring pages can be found as well.