COLORFUL Spring!
An Internet Project

Photo taken of our daffodils on "Daffodil Day"
Click on the picture above to have some puzzle fun!
TIP: Change Puzzle Cut at top of page to 20 Piece Classic.

ABOUT THIS PROJECT

Colorful Spring is an online collaborative literacy project in which students are asked to share signs of a colorful spring in their different communities through poems and illustrations.

After reading and listening to spring stories and identifying signs of spring, students are asked to illustrate and write a descriptive class or individual poem that includes the color(s) of this wonderful season.

OUR WORK

Beautiful daffodils by Nora, Grade 2

Our work for this project had actually begun before we joined it. We had been finishing up our work for Team Groundhog 2005, and were discussing the concept of Spring, and how we know when this season has arrived. We read the book That's What Happens When It's Spring! by Elaine Good to get us in the "think Spring" mood. Then in Writers' Workshop we wrote Spring pieces answering the question, "How do you know when it's Spring?"

When I learned about Colorful Spring, I knew it would be a perfect extension of our Spring work. To get us thinking in color, I read the hilarious book The Easter Egg Farm by Mary Jane Auch.

In this book a chicken named Pauline lays some of the most extraordinary eggs ever seen. These would become the inspiration for our own work. (Click on the book to learn more about it.)
Next, we met as a class to collaboratively write our poem for the project. We decided to use the colors of the rainbow. We wanted to end with yellow, as we had recently experienced the absolute beauty of Daffodil Day (an American Cancer Society fundraiser) at our school. There were many wonderful ideas and MUCH revision, but we were pleased with our final product.

Lastly, we created "Pauline-ish" eggs (from The Easter Egg Farm) to illustrate our poem. We hope you enjoy our work as much as we enjoyed creating it!

Note: As part of our celebration on Daffodil Day, we explored William Wordsworth's amazing poem, "Daffodils". Here is Nora's illustrated piece.
To learn about the place in England that inspired Wordsworth's poem, click here ~ a must see!


WHEN IS IT SPRING? ~ A Poem by Ms. Jacoby's 2nd Graders

Artists from l-r, row 1: Eleanor, Connor, Rikki, Johnathan, Caroline, Nick
From l-r, row 2: Louise, Wes, Sachy, Kubi, Allyson, Molly
All these beautiful eggs will be put together into a class book,
illustrating our poem and entitled “When is it Spring?”
It's Spring when orange flutters by on the wings of a beautiful monarch butterfly.
It's Spring when red crawls among the roses on the back of a ladybug with black spots.
It's Spring when purple shares its sweet scent as the lilacs begin to blossom on their bushes.
It's Spring when blue quivers as robins' eggs are about to hatch.
It's Spring when green spreads its blanket of soft grass across meadows and fields.
It's Spring when
yellow blooms on daffodils, so wonderful and elegant, like sunbeams that brighten our day.
That's when it is Spring!
Enjoy some terrific puzzles from other great Room 211 artists here.

ADDRESSING THE STANDARDS

This project addressed the following Massachusetts English Language Arts Curriculum Framework Standards:

Standard 2: Questioning, Listening, and Contributing
Students will pose questions, listen to the ideas of others, and contribute their information or ideas in group discussions or interviews in order to acquire new knowledge.

Standard 4: Vocabulary and Concept Development
Students will understand and acquire new vocabulary and use it correctly in reading and writing.

Standard 14: Poetry
Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes, structure, and elements of poetry and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.

Standard 19: Writing
Students will write with a clear focus, coherent organization, and sufficient detail.

Standard 20: Consideration of Audience and Purpose
Students will write for different audiences and purposes.

Standard 21: Revising
Students will demonstrate improvement in organization, content, paragraph development, level of detail, style, tone, and word choice (diction) in their compositions after revising them.

Standard 23: Organizing Ideas in Writing
Students will organize ideas in writing in a way that makes sense for their purpose.


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