Fifth Graders enjoying school year

Our fifth graders are enjoying the school year, growing friendships and making memories. It is remarkable to see their ongoing persistence towards academic goals. Watching our students grow and mature as the year unfolds is very rewarding. We are so proud of their hard work and perseverance. We are tackling our learning targets in our classes and working very hard. Our new English/language arts curriculum has been teaching us many reading skills, as well as teaching us habits of character. We just finished reading “Esperanza Rising” and then wrote and performed monologues as if we were one of the characters from the book. To celebrate the end of the unit, we held a fiesta featuring several of the foods mentioned in the book. We also had an opportunity to make a yarn doll like one of the characters made in the book. Our social studies focus has been supported through our English/ language arts curriculum as we have studied how human rights can be taken away and what we can do to protect them. In math class, we completed our fraction unit and have been working on place value and decimals. This challenged us, but it was exciting to see student growth as the unit went on. In science we have studied our watery planet Earth, as well as outer space. We continue to focus on lifelong learning skills, including organization, preparation and character development. Perseverance is our word of the month for January, and our fifth graders continue to amaze us as they persevere with new learning that is challenging.

So far this year, we enjoyed helping our school and community with our annual food drive in November. The students were happy to help out with packing up all of the food donations. We are also looking forward to our rescheduled roller skating trip to Melody Gardens in February. Let’s hope the weather cooperates this time! Fifth grade allows several unique opportunities to make so many fun memories together. It is a great place to be!

~Heidi Michaelis and Patti Jennings