Most. Fun. Ever.

My title sums up my day! I had a FANTASTIC day with my quarters!!! We had "The Writing Games"!!!!!!  I would love to know your thoughts about our day!

(Disclaimer:  Please ignore the brown butcher paper hanging on my walls.  We have our state tests in writing next Tuesday and Wednesday, so I had to take my anchor charts down and cover up things on the walls. Hahahaha! I still have more to do on Monday!)

I cannot begin to explain how wonderful my quarters did and how much they loved it!  I did, too!  So, I've decided to tell you about it...in pictures!

The quarters were greeted by this poster letting them know today was the day!!  We started off discussing the book.  I gave them a "back of the book" summary and told them that I HOPE they read the book first, before they see the movie.  (A teacher can dream, can't she???)  Next year, I will DEFINITELY introduce the book before STAAR Writing!  We then watched the trailer on IMDB.

I talked to them about key terms used in the series.  We used these terms during our games, too!  Then...we had our REAPING!!!  Each quarter wrote their name on the back of a ticket.  I drew one name at a time, announced them (extravagantly), and assigned them a district.  Our desks were already set up in groups of 4, so I named 5 districts.

I then told them what the saying/quote (below) from the books meant for us and what it meant to the Tributes in the book.

Some of my girls were so into this!! They held hands while I called out the Tributes!!! So awesome!!!

 Then, (dun dun dundun) the game began!!!!!  This is District 2 playing "Kaboom Writing"!

District 5, also playing "Kaboom Writing"!

 Quarters were allowed to write on the desks with dry erase markers!  Tissues helped them erase!!! District 1...

District 3 and 4 played "Go Fish--Parts of Speech"!

I llloooooovvvvveeeeedddd it when quarters or answer monitors went to the Word Wall to check answers!!!!!  The monitors took their jobs seriously!!!

After several rotations, the winners of each round had a "Spin Off" to the death (figuratively, of course!).  They used the spinners that they made and decorated at the beginning of the week!

We ended the games with two teams competing in a game of  "ZAP!" MiMi from 5th Grade Rocks, 5th Grade Rules! listed this game on her blog a couple of days ago and I stole borrowed it.  The kids LOVE it!!

The team with the win challenged members of the losing team to spin-offs!  The winners in each class (AM/PM) were the quarters with the most spinners collected!  I also gave a small prize to one girl Tribute and one boy Tribute!

While we were playing "The Writing Games", our 5th graders (by TOTAL coincidence) were finishing up their Olympics in the library.  They had a parade throughout the hallways to celebrate.  So our 4th graders lined the hallway to cheer them on!  It added to our theme because I correlated their parade to the parade of Tributes in The Hunger Games! I could not have asked for a better day!!!!

They had such a good time and so did I.  And it was such a great way to review!  I can rest tonight, knowing that I've done all that I can!  I love teaching!

As a special treat, my Megan came to visit my classroom during the games!  She met my students and had a chance to see what some of 4th grade is about.  Of course, my kids loved her.

I close with a quote from one of my favorite authors.  It's not a Hunger Games quote, because I couldn't find anything on my quote list that fit how I felt about today.  But my students realize every day how much I love books, and if I hadn't read The Hunger Games series, then our games today would never have happened.

“I don't believe in the kind of magic in my books. But I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book.”
― JK Rowling

I agree, Jo, one hundred percent...