Similes Make Us Smile!

We have begun a unit on poetry and poetic language. Last week we studied alliteration and this week we are learning about and starting to use similes. A simile is a figure of speech that compares two things that are not normally alike using the words like or as. The kids came up with some great ones. Here are a few of my favorites.

Carter-Miss Irene is as lovely as a rose getting smelled by me.
Keenan- My puppy Max is as cute as a bunny running down a hill.
Grace- My friend Jay is as cool as a kitten riding a skateboard.
Piya- Cake is as sweet as a 10 pound sugar rush.
Anisa- Green broccoli is as juicy as an ice-lolly in summer.


And some personal favorites ;-)

Mustafa- My teacher, Miss Rorey, is as cute as a monkey.
Ella- My teacher, Miss Rorey, is as lovely as a bird singing to me.
Mimi- Miss Rorey is as pretty as a rose that just bloomed.


 

Cinquain Poetry

This week we began our poetry unit. We wrote acrostic poems, practice alliteration, reviewed the importance of using carefully chosen words and wrote cinquain poems. Here are a few of our student poems from this week.

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Television

Voice, wordy

Playing, singing, watching

Good to watch television

Loud

By Ally

Friends
Kind, honest
Caring, committed, accepting
Friends are friends and they never break up
B.F.F.!

By Maya

 

Earth Day Celebration!

We had such a fun Friday. Most students came to school dressed in green to celebrate Earth Day and even if they forgot the class determined that everyone wearing the IST uniforms, which are blue and yellow, represented Earth Day by showing the colors of water and the sun.

Students came in excited to share their projects and is was so much fun seeing what they came up with as homework during the week. I used a Choice Tic-Tac-Toe board and the students had to bring in their projects Friday morning as homework. The thought and time spent was admirable and students learned so much from each other. Here are a few highlights.

Travis made this really cool container and wrote the directions for making one yourself from a recycled water bottle. He found the idea on-line and I found a site that shows you how to make them here (although you should not need it since his directions are thorough and neatly written out for you :-)

Meet made a list of ideas for creating things out of a recycled cereal box... so cool. I like the bag idea. He also made a Venn diagram showing us the similarities and differences between a clean and dirty environment. 

 This is also Travis's. He created this wonderful diorama to show the environmental differences between our environment and what will happen if we don't recycle. I loved his little typed out informational bits.

 This is another of Meets. It was so neat and well done, I had to share it. He was really excited to share some of the interesting facts with us.

 Here is Maiya's collage poster. It is fitting that she drew a hippo since we live in Tanzania. Nice work Maiya!

  

Here is my absolute favorite though. Christophe made an interactive poster and had us play a question and answer game with us. Check out the Challenge: Why do people pollute? The answer: You answer that!! 

 

Next, we participated in an Environmental Scavenger Hunt. The students got to mingle, get some signatures and find out who among them recycled, knew which room in their house had the most light bulbs or could name the last three things they threw away. Both the class homework and scavenger hunt are thanks to this great blogger.Thank you!

At recess Ms. Heitmiller, and her Green Team organized a few games of students vs. adults. It turned into green vs. everyone else. I was out there playing basketball and football with other great teachers and students. It was so much fun!

Something cool and totally unexpected on Friday was watching a HUGE spider take on a praying mantis. During snack time, I was reading Ramona, when all of the student one student shrieked and screamed. Unable to control himself, he ran to the window and we all followed. What we found was round one of a fine insect battle. After about 2 minutes, the praying mantis escaped the web and fell about 7 feet to the ground. Not only was it cool, it solved the mystery of the first grade students throwing rocks at the top of my window. There is always a reason for actions, although at first glimpse, it may not be apparent.

I leave you with an acrostic poem by the very talented Tim. Until next Earth Day, think about this:

Everyday life is not OK.

Alarming pollution will destroy the Earth!

Rescuing the planet is down to us.

Together we can protect the environment,

Help save our planet for our children.

Acrostic Poem

Two of my girls just love, love, love to write during Daily 5. Whenever there is free choice for language time, they ask me if it is alright if they write, and ask to get out the box of writing prompts. Then they sit down together with sharpened pencils, their heads down toward their papers, just working away.

The other day, they showed me an acrostic poem about lemons that they wrote together. We had not worked on acrostic poems for about 2 months, so I was surprised and thrilled that they chose to write using this poetry method. I let them type it up together and asked them if I could publish it on the class blog. You can tell by the many exclamation marks that they were excited about their work.

Lime !

Even sour !

Mostly yellow !

Oval !

Not sweet !

By N. and M.

Evan's Plantastic Acrostic Poem

Puffed up fruit
Unusual
Mushy
Perfect
King of all plants
Incredibly tasty
Nice to eat

By Evan