Earth Day Poetry Activities - Giveaway!

We finished ELA testing today!  Woohoo!  What a huge relief!  Come what may with the results, I'm just so happy to have it behind us.

I can honestly say that nearly all of the kids I tested today (I only test ELLs who receive extra time), they really worked hard.  I was so happy to see them using the strategies that I taught them.  And for many of them, their writing was excellent :-)  They read the prompts and use text evidence.  Awesome.

In little bits, here and there, I've been trying to stick in some poetry.  I'd hate for April, National Poetry Month after all, to end without having taught a little bit of poetry!  And next Monday is Earth Day!  So I kind of mushed the two together with  Earth Day themed poetry activities (available on TpT).

On Wednesday, we worked on sorting Earth Day themed similes and metaphors.  The kids sorted the metaphors and similes and talked about the two things being compared.  Then they went to work on writing their own similes about the Earth.  I made this set differentiated and when I read "the river was as wet as water," I was really glad!

For my independent students, they received 8 cards with the frame of a simile (the river is _____ like a _____).  For students who need a little more structure, they received a set of characters with the characteristic included (the river is as fast moving as _____). And for students who need a LOT of support, they received cards with a place to brainstorn and scaffolded questions to guide them to write a simile.  For a couple of kids, I mixed two of the sets.  I gave one of my girls a highly structured page and the medium support page.

We also built some sentences with personification!  This was a fun activity!

To complete this activity, the kids picked a noun card, a verb card and a preposition card to help begin their personification.  I had to work on this in a small group with some of my ELLs to help them think creatively.  They built personifications such as "the flower laughed when the grass tickled her."  I was pleased!

Next week, we will start drafting cinquains and haiku.  I'm purposefully keeping it simple because we still have three more days of math testing at the end of next week and I hate to start something we can't finish!

I'm so relieved that my ELA testing is over, and pretty proud of this package, so I want to give away two copies of my Earth Day Poetry Activities product!

Leave me a comment with something exciting.  Did you finish testing?  Are you going on a field trip?  Is school over soon?  (Jealous!)  Be sure to include your email address and I will pick two people randomly during my lunch period tomorrow (sometime between 10:20 and 11:10am on April 19th)! 

So....tell me something exciting!