Pinball wizard!

I feel like a pinball wizard, with about 26 little pinballs zooming around all the time! I thought I posted yesterday but I don't see it...sorry.
Yesterday, we had another great day. (I posted a lot on Twitter and Facebook too!) In meeting, we shared our favorite song (which meant I sang all day long because I had them in my head!) and then we got into small groups to try and find "uncommon commonalities" among us. It was hard! One group found that they each had a sibling. One group all liked dogs... Then, in Word Study, we sorted our words and found that all of our words have the "ow/oy" sounds, with ow, ou, oy and oi. In Writer's Workshop, we practiced our parts of speech understanding by completing Mad Libs. In The Beaded Moccasins, Mary turned 12 on May 11, 1759, had a terrible fight with her mother, ran off and she was captured by Indians! I overheard a kiddo say, "NOW it's getting interesting!" I love when they love to read! We heard more similes and found that they are really helping us to visualize the story as the author wanted us to. We continued our work with mood and the poem from StoryWorks in Reader's Workshop and also read, blogged and visited the library. We had Art, lunch (where there is a book club started by some kiddos-on their own-like they came to me and asked if they could start a book club...AWESOME!) and then outdoor recess. We began our Math Workshop with a gallery walk, looking around the room at everyone's posters about the vending machine division problems from Monday. We talked about what we were looking for: problem-solving, division strategies, answers to the problems, etc. NOT how pretty or colorful they were. Then we discussed our thoughts on our work as well as what others had to say. Next, we got another problem from the "Teacher's Lounge" and worked to find the answers. Students are doing a really good job with division and really pushing through! We'll be taking our test over multi-digit multiplication and division on Monday. Next, we got the computers and completed a webquest on weathering and erosion for Science.
Today, there was a substitute in the classroom as I was with the other 4th grade teachers discussing and planning. Our substitute was one that had a tough time when he was here last but today, he said, was much better. I'm thinking there are some potato head pieces in our future! In Word Study, they proved their understanding of the generalization by finding more words that fit the "ow/oy" pattern. They completed Mad Libs and shared some of the silliness for Writer's Workshop. In Read Aloud, they read, My Friend is as Sharp as a Pencil that was written in similes. Then, they illustrated some silly similes themselves. They read the fiction story, The Golden Lie, in StoryWorks and then read independently, blogged and visited the library. We had Music today and then lunch and outside recess-we made it before the rain! In Math Workshop, they worked on figuring out some ways that we could all go to an amusement park and created posters. Tomorrow, we'll take another gallery walk and "critique the reasoning of others" again reflect on our understanding. In Science, we completed the webquest but also completed some crossword puzzles online about weathering and erosion.