Fifth Grade Favorites: Questions of the Day!

I think the best part of being in the 5th grade was learning so much about my students as individuals! Their personalities really start to come out in this grade and it is so fun to get to know them. One way I did this was by writing Questions of the Day on the whiteboard and having students write their answers. Questions ranged from “What’s your favorite food” to “what does friendship mean to you” and everything in between!

One of my favorites was “What will you create Wednesday?” I drew random lines and shapes all around the whiteboard and told the kiddos to pick one and draw something from it. The kiddos are so creative! There was a giraffe, a cat, and even a UFO. I was very impressed with my 5th graders after this one.

Another one I loved doing was one I already mentioned. The question was, “what does friendship mean to you?” (Sadly, I don’t have a picture of this one.) The responses were so sweet and insightful for 10/11 year olds. One of my favorite responses was “to me, friendship means happiness and acceptance.” That was from a 10 year old! That’s when my eyes were really opened to how intelligent children are and how sometimes adults don’t really think too much into what children think or say. Children can be really insightful about certain topics and I really believe it’s a teachers role to listen to their thoughts and take them seriously. For a 10 year old to understand that friendship means acceptance is amazing! We really need to give children more credit and be there as teachers to support and listen to them talk about things like that.

As cliche as it sounds, children are the future. If we want a good one, we need to teach them more than math and reading. We need to teach them how to be good people, which can start with how to be a good friend.

So.. that got deeper than I expected it to go. I guess those 5th graders really taught me a lot! I sure do miss those kiddos!

Thanks for reading! Expect a new post around this time next week! 🙂

-Hayley

Fifth Grade Favorites: Robots!

So I thought I was going to do one big post about things I did in the 5th grade, but I quickly found that the post would be too long. So I am going to post a series of posts instead! Welcome to the first post of Fifth Grade Favorites! 🙂

5th grade was amazing and I am so sad to be leaving it. When I first got here though, I was so scared. I have never worked with older kiddos before, the oldest I worked with was 6 year olds and now all of the sudden I was with 10 and 11 year olds!

The very first thing I got too see was the kiddos building their own robots! Crazy right? I never knew that activities such as that happened in the elementary level.

Step One: Build a Robot following instructions.

I never got to do anything that cool (I was geeking out more than the kids during some parts, no shame over here).

The students were put into groups of two or three and they had to first build a robot with instructions. After they built the robot and it worked, they got to create their own robot. The only thing they needed to make sure the robot could do was move blocks using arms of some kind. The creativity of these kiddos was incredible! I could definitely see some of them becoming engineers some day with the work they did.

The last thing the kiddos did with their robots is compete with them! They had to move blocks from one side of a field to the other. The catch was they had to avoid the red parts on the field which would stop their robot and they would have to start over. It was so fun to watch them maneuver their robots all around the field.

 

 

Catching Up…

So.. I didn’t blog at all like I was going to throughout my student teaching experience. I am planning on doing so from now on out – either weekly or biweekly. (It’s already in my planner so I have to do it, right?).

Today is my last day of Student Teaching in the 5th grade. For those who know me, I’ve always said that I was going to be in the younger grades, that that’s where I belong. However, as I leave the 5th grade, I realize how much I loved being here! The personalities of some of these kids are so much fun to experience. I didn’t expect loving it as much as I did.

A lot of that has to do with my Cooperating Teacher. She showed me how fun and exciting the 5th grade can be and she completely changed my mind about it. The kiddos had a lot to do with it too of course. From competing in a March Madness Bracket with them to planning fun, long-term projects, they were so fun to work with.They are also very good at making me sad on this last day with all of the cute “I will miss you’ messages I’ve been getting all day.

Something else I had going on during my time in the 5th grade was the edTPA. That took up most of my time. It was a long process but I submitted and will know in a couple weeks if I passed. (Fingers crossed!)

I am also in the process of applying for jobs. I found a district that I absolutely love and think I would fit well in, so hopefully I’ll get a call!

I am planning on putting together a post about my favorite things of 5th grade. I just had so much fun the past 8 weeks – I don’t know how I’ll choose what to write about!

Thanks friends, look forward to more frequent posts in the future! 🙂