What a Day It Was At School!

Prelutsky, J., & Cushman, D. (2006). What a day it was at school!: Poems. New York: Greenwillow Books

Genre: children’s poetry

Age group: k-3^rd grade

Summary:  This is a light-hearted, amusing book of various poems that are correlated with school.  For instance, there are poems on a science experiments, wearing a backpack, taking a field trip, the library, a funny classmate, etc.  The poems contained in this collection are simplistically written and entertaining for children. 

Reflection:  I thoroughly enjoyed these poems and think they are perfect to use for 2^nd grade.  They are very entertaining and have hidden humor throughout them.  I think many of them cater to the emotions and thoughts of students, which would make it easy for children to relate to them.  My favorite poem from the collection of poems was, “I Wish I’d Studied Harrder.”  The poem has a lot of strong vocabulary.  The rhyme scheme is different because it doesn’t follow a particular pattern, which is a good thing for students to see various types of rhyming in poetry.  A particular stanza reads; “I wish I’d studied harrder, for out spellink test today.  I’m sorrie that I didn’t, now I am feeling some dismay.”  I think this would also be a good poem to discuss underlying messages that the author tries to get across. This is a short, narrative poem that it telling a story about a character that did not study for their spelling test and feels frustrated when taking the test. Prelutsky adds creativity to the story by misspelling words throughout the story so the readers can really see that the character can’t spell because he didn’t study. I also liked the sentence variety throughout this poem; there are italics, hyphens, ellipses, simple sentences, and compound sentences.  This would be a good chance to show your students different forms of sentences they can use when writing- “I tried to spell Cunneddykit, But really I just gessed…”