Last Day of March

Today is the last day of March and wow what a month it has been. In class today we are going to use bubbl.us to help us brainstorm events that happened in the month of March. After the brainstorm, we are going to write about one (or more) of these events in our 'writer's notebooks'. So, the idea behind today's post is that I would like to see some of the readers of this blog post their favorite March memories. Please remember who your audience is (a 5th grade classroom)and thanks in advance to those who post. The class and I enjoy reading your comments and they usually help us with discussions in our classroom.

ARES: Through Our Eyes

The RockYou video has been taken off due to technical difficulties (a.k.a. It was messing up our blog!). We are sorry for the inconvenience. We appreciated all your wonderful comments and are in the process of finding some sort of replacement. Blog on!

Alliteration is awesome!

In class this week, we learned that another type of figurative language is alliteration. An example of this would be a sentence such as the next one. Tupal the tiny turtle trudges through the ten foot tide. As you can see, all you have to do to create alliteration is use the repetition of a beginning consonant sound. Here's another example using the "s" sound. Silly Sally saddled up her horse and sauntered home. Improve my examples or create your own. It would be great to see what you can come up with. Thanks for taking the time to post! We appreciate it!

March Madness is here!

March Madness is officially upon us, and for a lot of people (including me!) this is one of the best times of the year. This past weekend didn't provide the upsets college basketball fans love, but it did have it's fair share of great memories. Please take the time to post some of your favorite March Madness memories and any other comments you may want to add. Then remember, this Thursday begins the weekend when we go from the Sweet 16 to the Elite 8 and by the end of the weekend, the Final 4. Are your brackets still looking good or are they broken? Let us know!

Figurative Language: Simile

Figurative language can really make a piece of writing 'come to life'. One type of figurative language is the simile. A simile is the comparison of two unlike things using like or as. Here are two examples of similes. The first example comes from the book Eggs by Jerry Spinelli.

"He opened his eyes and followed the river to the crown of the rising sun. It (the sun) was crisp and sharp and beautiful and smooth as a painted egg."

As you can read, Spinelli is comparing the rising sun to a painted egg. Two unlike things that are in his mind, beautiful. My second example is one I just made up.

The fifth grade students sounded like a steam train coming down the hall. Here, I am comparing fifth grade students to a steam train. Two unlike things, that sometimes sound very much alike!

Please post your own similes in the comments section. Thanks to those who post!

St. Patrick's Day Limericks

Welcome bloggers. At school today, we celebrated St. Patrick's day by creating some old fashioned limericks. We would love to see more creative limericks. So, please post some of your own limericks in the comments sections. Don't know what a limerick is? Click the work limerick and it will take you to 'How to Write a limerick' by Bruce Lansky on the website Giggle Poetry. Enjoy! And as always, thanks for sharing!!!

Personification

The sunrise's beems greated me this morning as I was making my way into door number 2. This is my example of personification. If you know what personification means, please post your ideas for all readers. If you don't know, you might consider looking it up in a dictionary; and then posting your own examples of personification. Thanks to those who share!

SMARTBoard Podcast

Good news! I'd like to share with the readers of this blog that an idea that started in my classroom was given some impressive attention. A SMARTBoard file I created (with the help of my students) was used on an award winning podcast ( pdtogo.com ). It's a file that we use in the classroom to sharpen our Scrabble skills. I've been listening to this podcast since the beginning of last year and to be the "main event" was very special to me. Thanks to those who helped out. Please take the time to check out the podcast as Ben & Joan always have great ideas to share. Luckily, I also got to share this week. Enjoy!

http://pdtogo.com/smart/

Favorite Quotes

And March is finally upon us! "Why?" you ask, am I so excited about the beginning of March. Well, let's say I'm a big fan of college basketball, and we'll leave it at that. I'm really wanting to talk about the post today. Words spoken by people to inspire, educate, motivate, and or entertain are powerful examples of the use of words. There are many quotations people use to carry out their everyday lives. I'm curious to see what quotations the readers of this blog use or know of that they feel are inspiring, motivating, and or entertaining. I've got a few I'll share in the comments section. Feel free to comment or share some yourself. Thanks in advance for your post!

P.S. REREAD your post before you publish.