This year, my fifth grade ELA class worked with Mrs. Cook's kindergarten classroom to interview some high profile Francis Wyman personalities. First, we took on the roll of live camera crew as our younger counterparts discovered jobs around school. The included finding out if this person had to wear a uniform and if he or she had to go to school to get his or her job. Honestly, the kindergartners did a great job as did our class!
Next step, I brought my ELA class to the lab where they got to utilize their fifth grade skills to set another student up for success. They took those videos, put them into their own Google Drives, shared them with their kindergarten partner and then created a blog post for their partners with the video in it. Those kindergarten students will get to enjoy their videos throughout their entire time here in Burlington.
As a side note, please take a moment to ask your own child to show you his or her digital portfolio blogs.
Finally, today we went for another visit. We showed our partners the videos and became the interviewers. The fifth graders took notes on their kindergarten partner's favorite parts of the project and important pieces of information. The project reminded fifth graders how far they've come and the kindergartners got to see a sliver of what's to come in their not so distant futures.
Gutter Boats
Science at its best leads us to our 5th grade end of year challenge. Can our fifth graders engineer their very own gutter boat applying their knowledge of nature? Students built wing shaped sails to catch wind, applied aerodynamics by making their hulls pointy to cut through the water, and researched boat bottoms to discover how rudders keep their boats going straight. As always our event was a success with times under 10 seconds. All students worked hard and in the end were proud of their own accomplishments...and the teachers were quite impressed as well!
Another beautiful day at the beach! Whether they were swimming, playing catch or standing at the concession stand, all fifth-graders had a blast. It's always such a great event to have with our fifth-graders at the end of the year. I'm so glad I got to spend this year with you!
