The 2022-2023 school year is coming to a close. Fifth grade is ready for Field Day!
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.
By Susie Rogers, ELA, 5th-8th
For the past week, my fifth graders have had the absolutely best time of their lives by digging deep into the figurative language. They were detectives as they found words and phrases that shouted, “Don’t take me literally!” Today, the students were as busy as bees trying to escape the St. Patrick’s Day Escape Room by using their knowledge of alliteration, similes, metaphors, onomatopoeias, hyperboles, idioms, and personification. Though some will remain locked away forever because of the quick as a wink time limit, most students simply soared like eagles and were successful with their excellent and exciting escape!
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.”
After lots of research and preparation, the 5th grade Historians hosted a walk-through Colonial Village. Each of the six locations was set in a different colony and represented lifestyles from the tip of New England all the way into the deep rural south of Georgia. Visitors were treated to a demonstration of horse-shoeing, by a real blacksmith (and mom). Following that demonstration they walked through a Massachusetts general store, a Rhode Island home, a Blacksmith shop in New Jersey, the bedroom of a sick Pennsylvania boy, and a kitchen in Georgia and farmhouse in South Carolina.
