Colorful Spring!
 A Collaborative Internet Literacy Project   Spring 2007

Ms. Mary Kreul's 4th Grade
Richards Elementary School
Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin
Class Website    Class Blog

Colorful Spring! Project

4K's participation in the wonderful Colorful Spring! collaborative literacy project is part of a poetry unit that was part of a language arts unit this spring. The focus of the unit had three parts: to practice using descriptive words and phrases in writing, to include personal voice in writing, and to learn about the many different types of poems.

After reading Handsprings: poems and paintings by Douglas Florian, the class talked about how the author used descriptive writing in order to create interesting pictures of the spring season in his readers' minds. We also looked at the format of different alphabet books, using The Wildlife ABC: A Nature Alphabet by Jan Thornhill and The Victory Garden Alphabet Book By Jerry Pallotta and Bob Thomson, to determine the format that the Colorful Spring Alphabet poem should take.

The class worked in small groups to create a class ABC poem, with each group assigned to write about spring using several letters of the alphabet. After reading additional books about spring and much discussion, cooperative, and collaboration, five groups of fourth graders worked to compose the parts of the poem using their letters of the alphabet to describe colorful aspects of spring.

This year in 4K, students are reading poems each week from their poetry binders to practice fluency, so they had a good idea about the many different types of poetry written by people of all ages. They were given samples of several types of poetry from Memaw's Creative Writing Corner, wrote poems for Mrs. McGowan's Autumn Across America project last fall,  wrote poems during free choice writing time, and worked with an wonderful interactive poetry site called Instant Poetry Forms  to expand their poetry writing fluency.

We hope you enjoy reading our class poem and other poetry on our class page!

Colorful Spring Alphabet

A is for apple blossoms, white flowers that turn into apples
B is for bunnies, as cuddly and white as can be
C is for the caterpillar, a green eating machine
D is for the daffodil with its big yellow petals
E is for the robin's egg, a colorful blue beginning for baby robins
F is for colorful flowers blooming in the bright yellow sun
G is for green grass swaying in the cool spring breeze
H is for the bee hives that have noisy black and yellow bees in them
I is for inchworms digging in the warm brown dirt
J is for green jumping frogs in the cool blue pond
K is for rainbow kites that soar high in the blue sky
L is for learning how to ride your brand new red bike
M is for a moose coming out of its gray cave into the yellow sunlight
N is for a brown night hawk soaring in the night black sky
O is for an opossum hanging in a brown tree that's gaining new green leaves
P is for pears so juicy, sweet, and green
R is for queen bees that stay with the golden honey
S is for sunflowers growing so yellow and bright
T is for tulips with their colorful personalities
U is for dreaming under a tree with bark as brown as chocolate
V is for purple violets that bloom in the spring
W is for wildflowers blooming in all the colors of the rainbow
X is for xeriscaping, growing colorful plants with not that much water
Y is for yams, sweet orange vegetables that grow underground
Z is for delicious green zucchinis that begin to grow in spring

Wisconsin Grade 4 Standards for English Language Arts
A.4.2  Read, interpret, and critically analyze literature
A.4.3 Read and discuss literary and nonliterary texts in order to  understand human experience
B.4.1 Create or produce writing to communicate with different  audiences for a variety of purposes
C.4.2 Listen to and comprehend oral communications

National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS):
Use technology communications tools: Students use telecommunications  to collaborate, publish, interact with peers, experts, and other  audiences.