Five for Friday

Spring break can not come soon enough! It was one of those weeks that went by in a flash!

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LOVE THAT POEM 

We usually do a big poetry unit in April. The project has been passed down to third grade teachers at my school for over a decade. In the last couple of years we have added an analyzing poetry component. Last year I did both writing and analyzing at the same time. This year we looked at our data and decided we wanted to look at understanding poetry before the state test. We looked at figurative language. We hit the third grade common core “literal and non-literal language” standard. We spent two weeks on similes, metaphors, hyperboles, and personification. (We’d already covered idioms.)

Love That Dog is a poetry must read. Even though we are going to focus on writing poems in April we did write our own “Love that…..” poems this week. I remembered a former student teacher had done something like this with the fake book covers and all. I’m quite happy with how they have turned out!

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Stories in the Stars 

Last weekend we went to the star lab at the local science center. We’d were wrapping up a unit on stars, and our kids had the constellation bug. After a playground conversation with the third grade team, I whipped up this quick project.



I’d been looking forward to seeing the finished product all week, and they did not disappoint!



I posted the project in my store if you are interested.

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Harlem Shake…or not 

Last year our faculty did a flash mob on the last day of school. We were going to do another at the faculty basketball game, but participation was weak so they canceled it. The alternative was that we would all come to school on Wednesday dressed in costume.

We filmed our own school appropriate version of the Harlem Shake to show at the half time of the faculty basketball game. If the kids asked why we were dressed up, we had to tell them to come to the game to find out.

I posted a picture of my outfit on my Facebook page on Wednesday.

I wore a dress that was my mom’s back in the day. I had a hard time leaving the house though. My daughter did not understand why she could not wear a Cinderella dress to school if I was wearing my fancy dress. It was more than her three-year-old mind could understand. In the end she stamped her foot, pointed at me, and told me that when SHE is a grownup she is going to wear THAT dress.
In the end I actually missed the filming. Just before the top secret filming there was white smoke in Rome signaling a new pope. The new pope was going to be named any second. I decided that it just seemed wrong to pass up the pope for the Harlem Shake.

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One to Remember 

I had a former student stop by yesterday to see me. He is now in 10^th grade. It took me a little while, but I remembered his name. We chatted for a while and then as he was leaving I embarrassed him with a story I remembered about him. We’d been reading The Talent Show in our basal that week. The question on the test said something like, “What did Beanie learn about herself after working with Carol Ann?” His answer was, “She learned not to take any krap.” Funny enough he was spot on!

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Be sure to check out Gina’s Birthday Bash next week! 

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Enjoy your weekend and have a happy St. Patrick’s Day!