Pumpkin Pumpkin!

We love to read poems to practice our fluency.  Each week we add a new poem to our Poetry Notebooks.  We also enjoy adding hand motions.  We hope you enjoy the poem below.  It's called Pumpkin Pumpkin!  It is sung to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.  Enjoy!



Pumpkin Pumpkin from Valerie Ruckes on Vimeo.

Four Read Apples - Fluency Poem

Each week we focus on a new fluency poem.  This week's poem is called Four Red Apples.  We read or sing the poem during our Morning Meeting time each day.  On Friday's we illustrate the poem and place a copy into our Poetry Notebooks.  Our Poetry Notebooks go home on Fridays so we can continue to read the poems to our families and practice our fluency at the same time.  Take a look at our video and illustrations below.  How do you practice fluency in your classroom?


https://www.dropbox.com/sc/8jinbvkrplj87r8/AACqT71JKYpI1QoXXc3PTmfpa

Poetry and Fluency

Each week we learn a new poem to help us with our fluency. This week, we learned a poem called Four Red Apples. Mrs. Ruckes introduced the poem on Monday. We read (or sing) the poem together, each day, during our morning meeting and our reading becomes more fluent. On Friday's we illustrate our poems and place them in our Poetry Notebooks. We hope you enjoy our slide show below:

Four Red Apples 
(Sung to:  This Old Man)

Four red apples on the tree,
Two for you and Two for me,
So-o shake that tree and watch them fall.
1, 2, 3, 4-
That is all!

Four Red Cherries...
Four Read Leaves...

Digital slideshow customized with Smilebox What do you think of our singing?  That's B.T. in the background, reminding everyone what to sing next.

Four Red Apples from Valerie Ruckes on Vimeo.


What are some of the ways you work on fluency in your classroom?

Fluency Poems on Animoto

December Poem-Animoto Fluency Work Each week my first graders practice a new fluency poem during our morning meeting time. The poem is introduced after we read our morning message together. The title of our newest poem is, December. We use poetry to practice our fluency. Poetry is a fun way to practice reading with expression, to learn about punctuation and phrasing, to notice and identify word families, and to work on our word accuracy strategies. At the end of the week, we illustrate our poems, and then we place them into our poetry notebooks. Walking Museum After our poems are illustrated and placed in our poetry notebooks, we share them with our classmates. A fun way to share our work is to have a Walking Museum. During the Walking Museum, we walk around our table groups and notice the great work of our classmates. Daily 5 During our Daily 5 time, we also make good use of our poetry notebooks. We use them during Read to Self, or independent reading. We also use our poetry notebooks during Read to Someone, when we read with a buddy. As you can see, we love using poems to work on fluency. We hope you enjoy our illustrations too. Just click on the Fluency Poems-Video link at the top. You'll see our illustrations via Animoto. How is fluency practiced in your classroom?