Talking Rhyme with Dallas ISD

Today, thanks to the Warren Instructional Network, I had the privilege of spending the afternoon with a room full of PK-2 bilingual teachers from Dallas ISD.  As a Dallas resident, I loved getting to meet these teachers and see their passion for improving education for their students.  Our room got a little too full so I promised those that were turned away that I would post some of the resources shared here.

We kicked off our discussion on rhyming by first looking at some quotes from the Introduction to the Spanish Language Arts and Reading TEKS.  Can I just say that these make me so proud to be a Texan?  If you don't believe that these are actually written in our educational law, you can read them yourself right here!

In the interest of vertical team building, check out the importance of rhyming in these SLAR TEKS for grades 3-5 below.  Upper grade teachers, I know you appreciate primary grade teachers that help students develop their ability to distinguish rhyming words AND generate rhymes.  Those abilities will definitely be necessary for analyzing and writing poems!

Check out this Online Spanish Rhyming Dictionary for an excellent resource for creating lists of rhyming words for games and activities.

 Here is a list of some rhyming storybooks for anchoring students' understanding of rhyming:







These are wonderful books full of Spanish poetry for helping students appreciate rhythm and rhyme:







We played two HIGHLY competitive rounds of ¡Basta con las sílabas! where teachers had one minute to generate rhyming words with the endings listed on the game board.  When the timer sounded, participants shared their words with their group.  Every person that had a unique word received a point for his/her word.  If someone else in the group had the same word, neither person received a point.  I loved listening in to the conversations about different words!  This is such a fun, authentic activity for promoting rhyming and vocabulary development!  You can download my game board here for free!

I have previously blogged about the other games and activities that were shared today.  You can view all of ITDL's rhyming posts at this link: http://www.iteachduallanguage.blogspot.com/search/label/rhyming

Thanks again to the DISD teachers for a wonderful afternoon!  Please let me know if there is anything else that I promised you that I have forgotten here.

Stay tuned for a giveaway of a set of five Spanish poetry books from Warren Instructional Network and Booksource.  Details will be posted tomorrow morning!