Today we learned about the nickel and compared it to the penny. I hid plastic pennies around the room for each student to find. We learned the poem "Find a penny, pick it up. Then all day you'll have good luck." Students put the penny in their shoe for good luck. The poem was a good opportunity to talk about contractions. We learned that they are different from compound words because some letters are missing. Here are the other poems we learned. Penny, penny easily spent. Copper brown and worth one cent. Nickel, nickel thick and fat. You're worth five cents--I know that! We also talked about Martin Luther King Jr. and his dream. We learned that Dr. King's dream was a vision for the future and not a nighttime dream. Students wrote about their wish or dream during Writer's Workshop. Bram's dog Cookie came to visit at the end of the day.