A D.I.Y Poem!

I was looking for something a little different for this week's poem. I wanted to find one that combined many or most of the text features we've been talking about in class so that students could really put their skills to work.   

When I couldn't find one, I decided to write it myself...here it is! 

I Made A Mess

An original poem by Patti Mihalides   

I made a mess,

It’s really bad,

My Mom and Dad are pretty mad.

I thought I knew, 

how to make,

cheesey lasagna and chocolate cake.

Turns out I don’t.

I have no clue,

about cooking stuff and recipes too.

There’s cheese and chocolate on the floor,

the ceiling fan and sliding door.

I don’t know why-  

Hey is that salsa there?

It’s on the fridge!

Ewww!!! And in my hair?

I can’t explain the pickles either.

And who let in that baby beaver? 

He’s chewing on the table legs!

OH NO! I stepped on all the eggs!

(Sigh) 

I’m calling Grandma, she’ll save me.

I’ll come back when I’m 33.

In this poem (and kids should be mindful of this in preparation for Friday's weekly test) we have: 

• a focus on attending to punctuation when reading aloud with all those commas, periods and question marks (parents really encourage your child to focus on this aspect of the poem) 
• words that are sounds such as "sigh" and "EWWW" 
• adjective (cheesey and chocolate) 
• words in italics  
• how to "read" that long hyphen at the end of the "I don't know why" line (I know there must be a proper name for that thing) 
• the importance of writing with detail to create a picture in the reader's mind 
• contractions galore! 

Answer key for the quiz

We had a Math quiz last Friday and a part of our Math lesson today, we reviewed what a 4/4 score should look like. I wanted to share this information with you here as well.  

Fun Friday?

I don't know, I figured that since yesterday was such a fun-filled day of candy and activity, we'd forego our usual "Fun Friday" and get back to business.  But you what? Even an "un-fun" Friday in 208 is still a ball.  
We wrote our POTW test this morning and then I had the boys and girls work on a "Halloween Reflection" page that I created. 

If you're a teacher and you'd like to do this with your class next year, help yourself to a copy here.  

After that, the kids had Gym with Ms. Bellmore and then we watched our usual Full House episode during lunch(we do this every Friday, grab a coffee and join us sometime!). 

After lunch, we had Math Message (something new we're doing and I'm *totally* loving) and had a quiz on subtraction of two-digit numbers. 

Then we moved our desks into rows.  Hello grown up students! Our room suddenly looks so mature and sophisticated. It's going to be great! No more turning to go into "Smartboard Mode" and lots and lots of important conversations to be had between elbow partners.  

Seems like a pretty regular school day doesn't it? But somehow, SOMEHOW! we made it fun. We laughed a lot today and I couldn't tell you why.  No wait, we did laugh about how some kids keep their Halloween candy 'til Easter (help me understand their self-discipline please?), how some kids eat the good candy first and then give the rest to Mom and Dad and how one little classmate got a full-sized chocolate bar from one house and Dad got a beer! 

Let's face it, even when we're not having "fun",  208 is really great.     

Friday Valentine

Found this on Pinterest and it made me smile.