LMN Tree: Purring About Winter Poems, a Winter Play, and Freebies

Want to help your struggling readers build confidence and fluency at the same time? Poetry and plays are perfect. Poems are short and so much less intimidating. Try choral reading to help reluctant readers feel safe to take the risk of reading as their voices blend in with the whole group. Poetry is also great for teaching word strategies, fluency, and writing. Plays can be used in the same way. In many plays there are parts for all the boys or all the girls. If you don't have enough parts for everyone, 2 or 3 students can read the same part. Usually the parts are small and practiced over and over again which also helps build confidence and fluency. My ESL students loved performing plays and reading poems, especially ones they could act out.

I decided to write a fun winter play and winter poetry packet for Grades 1-2. The play is called, "How Will I Know When it is Winter?" There is a Narrator and 9 characters that tell the children what happens to them when it is winter. Day is very short, Weather is very cold and Snow falls from the sky. What a great way to teach the signs of Winter! Then they can practice matching the picture/word card with the sign of winter card.

If you use interactive student notebooks there is a page to add where students will look at the picture and word. Then they will flip it back and write the sign of winter. You can see the activity in the picture below.

There are also 5 original poems about winter and literacy activities to go with each poem. Here is a sample of a dialogue poem called, "I Love Winter!" which can be done by dividing the class into 2 groups.Then pairs of students can recite it as a center activity. This is a great poem to teach end punctuation as there are questions and sentences with exclamation points. There is a whole class activity using punctuation cards as well as an anchor chart. Then students will punctuate the copy of the poem that has no punctuation marks as a center activity.

If you would like to check out this Winter play and poems packet just click on the picture below. Download the Preview to see all the materials and activities in the packet and get a free activity.