For a little coin review, we played a game in which each student was given a coin. In the center of the rug, I put index cards with values written in different ways (5 cents, .05, five cents). Students took turns telling the name of their coin, its value, and then they chose an index card with the matching value. They did very well! I had great fun reading The Odious Ogre. The book has lots of big words, but I basically act out books, so the class really understood what was going on. I know this because many of them chose to act out parts of the story afterward, when we were discussing it. On Thursday, each student will be assigned one of the big words to look up in the dictionary (with the help of their 4th grade buddy). On Friday, I will re-read the story and see if they understand it any better.