Valentines + sugar = crazy day!

OMG-today was crazy! They were loud and chatty and just plain crazy! We started with M4T and then after going over the answers and watching the news, we passed out valentines. The goal was for this to take about 15 minutes and then for students to enjoy 1 treat while they wrote in Writer's Workshop. However, at the end of Writer's Workshop, most students barely had their name on their paper. So, after special and after finishing Love That Dog, we finished our writing prompt. I let them know that as I've been grading their Checkpoint Writing Assessments, most of them have fallen in the mid-3rd grade level band. This didn't make them very happy. I also explained that the only way to become a better writer is to write more. This got them working (but only for a short time.) After turning in their prompt, they read, wrote poetry and blogged. It was inside recess thanks to the mini-snow storm we had this morning and frigid temperatures and when I returned, I found out that students snuck candy and put on tattoos from their valentines that were supposed to be in their bookbags until they got home. So, Math Workshop wasn't as fun as we thought because I wasn't Miss Happy... We finished up our Exemplar from yesterday about planting crops and then moved on to a little game-ish thing where we had to multiply fractions times whole numbers and model it with an area model, number line and equation. Math was cut a little short and we finished out the day sharing our Pitches for inventions. Good job inventors!