Silly Rhyming Sentences

I went to a mini PD at my building a couple weeks ago.  The PD was about phonological and phonemic awareness.  I've known the value of both of these areas, but hadn't really thought about how it affected my students this year.  A handful of my students came to me already reading this year and the majority of the rest picked up on reading very quickly.  I did quite a bit of phonemic awareness at the beginning of the year, but when the reading started to take off and guided reading seemed to take over my reading block, it kind of went by the wayside.

To begin the PD, the facilitator had us choose a person in our group and make up a silly rhyme using the person's name.  While we were working on it, she (the facilitator) asked me if I thought my students could do this activity.  I hadn't given it much thought prior to that, but decided that it was most definitely worth a shot!

Students worked in 4 heterogeneous groups to create a silly rhyme using a type of transportation.  The used the lists of transportation students had sorted earlier in the week to choose a type of transportation.  Once the silly rhyme was recorded by one person in the group, each student illustrated the rhyme.  I mounted them to a bright piece of construction paper and they are hung in our room.

"I bet the jet has a pet that is wet."

"A train is on the main track by the lane."

"I see a pet in a jet with a net."

"I see a car going to the bar far away."   My teammates definitely got a kick out of this one.    They struggled to come up with words that rhyme with "car" and they made this up completely independently (let me tell you...I tried to steer them FAR away from the word 'bar'!).

The kiddos loved making up these rhymes and couldn't wait to make more in the writing center.  One kiddos made a book of silly animal rhymes.  It seemed like a great way for higher level kiddos to continue to incorporate rhyming throughout the year!