Fifth grade at St. James always looks forward to the overnight field trip to the Arkansas Outdoor School…or better known as 4-H. Anticipation builds weeks before the actual trip with picking activities, going over the packing list, travel plans,and permission slips.

Then…the day of departure finally arrives. Fifth grade was able to experience team building, archery, canoeing, orienteering (using a map and compass), fishing, and rock climbing.

Field trips provide authentic, hands-on, experiential learning opportunities where students connect what they are learning in the classroom in a real-world context.

The world is the true classroom. The most rewarding and important type of learning is through experience, seeing something with our own eyes.-Jack Hanna

According to Merriam-Webster, a cloud is a visible mass of particles of condensed vapor (such as water or ice) suspended in the atmosphere of a planet (such as the earth) or moon. Fifth grade is currently investigating the water cycle. As a lab demonstration, students set up a model of a cloud (shaving cream), and slowly filled the “cloud” with water to visualize how clouds fill up with water vapor and create precipitation. Students were able to see the connection between the model created in the lab and the real world.

“Clouds are the sky’s imagination.”

“Climate is what we expect. Weather is what we get.” ~Mark Twain

Science has a way of explaining how things work in the world around us. Humans are naturally curious and science gives us the opportunity to engage in those curiosities.

Currently, 5th grade is learning about weather and water. In this instance, students were engaging in a lab to determine the differences between weather and climate. A discussion about what a “weather event” is, weather reports, and climate took place at the beginning of the lab. Then, students assigned a “weather event” to a day of the week. An individual bag of M&M’s were given to each student and students had to then count how many of each color the bag had. In random fashion, students chose a M&M and that was that day’s forcast.

Students had fun creating a weather report but were also informed that meterologists use a more sophisticated method of predicting the weather using scientific tools and technology, not M&M’s!

A good lunch with friends is the recipe for a joyful day!

I have vivid memories of lunchtime with my friends throughout school. It was (almost) the best part of the school day! Lunchtime in middle school includes food and conversation which is a great recipe for a joyful day.

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Fifth grade students have recently completed the unit on Force & Motion. Students were asked to create a poster with 6 vocabulary words associated with force & motion: Force, Motion, Inertia, Friction, Gravity, and Newton. The following rubric was followed:

*Vocabulary word

*Illustration

*Definition