1.6.12

Well my friends, you did not disappoint...I've had a GREAT birthday today!  The kiddos have been so sweet and so kind and have been so thoughtful and caring for an old gal's special day :)  I got homemade brownies (Thanks, Emilee...they are DELICIOUS!), an outfit for Jack (Thank you, Ashley - sooo cute and sooo thoughtful!), several cards (Thank you, Quayveon...it is obvious you took so much time and the two you made are magnificent! And thank you class for putting others together for me!), a box of cereal and a guardian angel (Thanks, Lawrence - you know me too well...cereal?  Genius!), and much more from our fun, fabulous friends!  Thank you so much, everyone for making me have an excellent birthday!

READING:
We did not do the 4-way FLEX grouping switch today because of some kinks we need to iron out.  It has been a bit chaotic so we are grateful for your flexibility and patience!  We will get this figured out for the best of our students so that they may continue to reach optimal success!
Today, we focused upon 2 more parts of speech within the figurative languages: onomatopoeia and alliteration...which are so, so fun! 

·       Onomatopoeia is the “popcorn” of the writing world, as it is the sound words.  If used to recreate specific sounds or moods, these fun-to-read words can give your stories, poems, or plays just the right “zing!”

To practice with this, we first visited THIS activity. Then, we created onomatopoeia of our own. 
After onomatopoeia, we learned about alliteration... 

·      Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sound in two or more neighboring words or syllables…you might call then, tongue twisters! 

·     But what’s the purpose of alliteration?  The purpose of alliteration is to create a consistent pattern that catches the mind's eye and focuses attention. 

·    Alliteration makes the reader read faster, thereby adding a sense of speed and intensity to the sentence.  Alliterative poems tend to be tongue twisters. They are written for the fun they bring when they are read!  (Example: She sells seashells by the seashore!)

·   And finally, proper alliteration is NOT a repetition of letters; it is a repetition of sound…for example, ‘never’ and ‘knight’ alliterate because they begin with the same consonant sound, BUT even though ‘tin’ and ‘thank’ begin with the same letter, they do not alliterate because they don’t begin with the same consonant sound.

 To practice with this, we created our own alliteration...and it was SILLLLLLY!  So fun!

HOMEWORK: none

MATH:

Our next unit is over Fractions, so in order to get an understanding of what the students already know about them, I had them take a pretest this morning.  Not much to my surprise but much to my delight...these students already know A LOT about fractions!  Awesome!  I told them that they're making me work more because I have to plan harder stuff to do which is an awesome dilemma to be in! 

HOMEWORK: none

PM activities:

we had our assembly to perform the dance we learned with the "Artist in Residence" yesterday!  The students did absolutely wonderful and it was so much fun watching them and all the other classes!  Here are some pics from the assembly:

I hope you have a tremendous weekend and thank you so much for making my day so, so special!  You are THE BEST!

I love all of you sooo sooooo sooooo much and thank YOU for loving me!

xoxo,

Mrs. Thomas