St. Patrick's Day-Tuesday, March 17, 2009

This morning we discovered that the Smartboard turned green! We don’t know who did it. Ms. Stern wasn’t in the room when the kids came in so we don’t think she did it. Anthony thinks the leprechauns did it. Lots of kids saw footprints on the walls in the hallway. They were little. We even saw a pair on the Flat Stanley bulletin board! Around snack time, Kaitlyn and some others discovered green glitter on the floor by the door. It appeared all around the room as the morning went on! We were all in the room and nobody saw anything or anyone appear! It’s a mystery!

We wrote about wishes that we had. While we brainstormed our ideas we heard bagpipe music coming from the hallway. Everyone quickly lined up to see the man pass by. He was wearing a skirt. We found out that it is called a kilt. The music sounded really cool. Once he passed by, we got back to work. Bartosz’s wish was that he could have a mud bike and ride it all day. Sean wished for 100 girlfriends because they are cute. Michael wished for $100 because he could be rich. Carly wished that she would have a real life kitten because she hasn’t had one since she was three.

During Reader’s Workshop we read Miss Nelson is Missing. We discussed the character traits that Miss Viola Swamp demonstrated. We came up with the words strict, mean, tough, and tricky and found evidence in the book to prove that she acted that way. Next, we went to our seats to practice reading and thinking about the characters in our books. We marked pages and wrote character traits as we read.

In art, we drew flowers with pencils because we’re learning about still lifes. A still life is something that you look at and draw what you see. The object stays still. Carly worked on coloring her still life with oil pastels. We learned how to blend the colors to make new ones. For example, adding white on top of the red will make pink.

In Writer’s Workshop we continued to practice showing instead of telling. Yesterday we acted out different emotions. We had to think of a feeling, remembered a time we felt that way, and acted out that memory for the class. Darren was nervous. He was acting out how he felt at the Dance Festival. Mia acted out being disappointed when our trip to Philipsburg Manor got canceled. It was hard finding the words that matched our actions (ex. clasped my hands together tightly while swinging back and forth; or jumped up and down, waving my hands in the air) and remembering the words that were being said during these moments. Today we started new stories, trying to remember to SHOW, not tell.