Are you looking for spring literacy activities for your elementary students? These easy and fun activities are sure to get your students reading and writing this spring!
Spring Read Alouds
There are so many fun spring read-alouds that you can share with your students! Here are some thematic roundup posts to help you start picking out books to read:
Spring Reading Challenges
Monthly reading challenges are a fun way to build excitement about reading! These challenges are reading goals you aim to achieve over a certain amount of time. The goals can be related to time spent reading, the number of books, or the types of books read.
Challenge students to read different types of spring-themed texts. They can read a book:
- that takes place in the spring
- about taking care of the Earth
- about an animal life cycle
- with a bunny as one of the characters
- about a famous athlete
Other types of reading challenges can encourage students to read while doing spring activities such as read a book:
- under an umbrella
- at the park
- while going somewhere on Spring Break
- with jokes for April Fool’s Day
Spring Reading Logs
Students can use spring reading logs to track their reading goals using spring icons (such as flowers, kites, raindrops, etc). They can color a flower for each book they read or add a raindrop every day they read during the month.
Spring Literacy Activities for Reading Buddies
Students can complete various spring literacy activities with their reading buddies. Students can also complete several of these activities by themselves during independent reading.
Reading buddies can complete spring reading book hunts together. They can look for spring items during their buddy reading literacy center. Some things to look for could be:
- flowers
- umbrella
- slide
- soccer ball
- rainbow
- kite
- bike
Discussion Prompts
Engaging discussion prompts are a fun way to work on students’ oral language skills – which are essential skills that can easily get overlooked with everything else we have to teach! Students can practice stating their opinions and supporting them with evidence.
Some prompts to get them talking:
- What is your favorite activity to do in the spring? Why?
- Who is the funniest person you know?
- If you were the Easter bunny, what would you deliver to kids?
- Where would you want to go for Spring Break?
Writing Prompts
Students can complete a shared writing activity with a buddy. These spring writing prompts would also be ideal to include in your writing center for students to select from. The options are limitless but here are some ideas to get you started. They can write:
- Explain why spring is the best/worst season
- Describe the signs of spring
- List things you can do on a rainy day
- Write where you’d go on a magic kite ride
- Write the steps for riding a bike
- Write a joke to tell a friend
- Explain the life cycle of a butterfly
Character Emotions
Students can use a fun spring emotions chart to identify how the characters in the story may be feeling. These charts can also be used at your writing center to encourage students to add more details in their stories
Cross-Curricular Activities
Spring is a time for new life and growth. It naturally lends itself to plenty of experiments you can conduct with your students across subject areas.
Some possible interdisciplinary learning activities to try:
- Plant seeds and record observations in a plant journal
- Have students ask questions and conduct experiments to see what variables impact plant growth
- Record observations of the butterfly life cycle and do creative writing about where their butterflies might fly off to
Spring Literacy Centers
Making Words Phonics Activity
Making Words is a hands-on phonics activity that promotes students’ phonological awareness and spelling skills. Students manipulate letter tiles to create words by blending the sounds together. They will need to change letters, add letters, and move letters around to spell new words. This multi-sensory approach deepens students’ understanding of how words work.
Challenge students to see how many words they can find using the letters in spring-themed phrases like April Fool’s Day or Memorial Day.
Low-Prep Literacy Centers
Low-prep literacy centers are simple spring literacy activities your students will love. You can make these centers with spring-themed cutouts from Carson Dellosa! As you’re shopping, be sure to use the code READINGROUNDUP10 for 10% off!
All you need to do is write, cut, and/or glue words or pictures onto the cutouts to create endless possibilities for literacy centers. Students can use the cutouts to:
- Match upper and lower case letters
- Match letters to pictures with the same initial sounds
- Create CVC words
- Practice writing high-frequency words
- Find rhyming words
- Create real or nonsense words with blends and digraphs
Outdoor Learning
Take advantage of the amazing weather and bring your lessons outside! It will be more engaging for students and enjoyable for you. There are some simple literacy activities you can do that don’t require a lot of preparation!
- Use sidewalk chalk to write high-frequency words, practice phonic skills, or look for root words & affixes
- Record descriptions of the sights, sounds, and smells of spring
- Take your books outside and just read!
What other spring literacy activities do your students enjoy? Share with us in the comments!
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