Fifth Grade

Throughout the school year, 5th graders will take on the responsibility of updating the class blog with information they want to share with the wider world. The students are responsible for deciding what to share, creating the text, and capturing images that help tell the story of our classroom. The 5th grade is also working on taking and using feedback, and would love to read your comments and suggestions for our next post. Please enjoy the post below–the first post written by 5th graders this year!
Thank you!
Ms. D and the 5th grade
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Welcome to the fifth grade blog!
Every week Rabbi Gouze tells us a riddle. This week the one she gave us was:

I am at the beginning of every end
The end of every place
I am the beginning of eternity
The end of time and space
What am I?

Check next time for the answer and a new riddle!!! Leave a comment if you think you know the answer!

Another thing we do every week with Rabbi Gouze is Parshat Hashavua, which means weekly Torah portion. Rabbi Gouze combines the weekly Torah portion in English and Hebrew with a short summary, and puts it on a piece of paper, which she gives to fifth grade. Then we write about our opinions and interpretations of the Parshah and hang our writing in the classroom. Then we read each other’s opinions and decide if we agree or disagree. Earlier in September, the Parshah was about B’nai Yisrael and how we are The Chosen Ones. We had to give our opinions about whether we think we are the chosen ones or not. We learned our ancestors were promised that they and their seed would be chosen forever, and we learned that we are the seeds. Take a look at some of our ideas!

In Design Lab, we have been working on a kippah project. We have been working on this because we noticed that many people are forgetting, losing, or choosing not to wear their kippot because it makes them uncomfortable. One group is making a kippah wheel to help people make better choices about their kippot. The other group is writing jingles to share over the intercom system to remind people when and why they should wear kippot. Here is one of our ideas:

“Wear your kippah on through and through.
That’s what G-d wants us to do!
Put your kippah on your head
for lunch and prayers, but not in bed!”

Another thing we did this month was work on making analogies for Freedom. We learned that analogies are when you combine two things that are different in lots of ways, but are similar in a couple of important ways. We wrote and created pictures that explain our analogies, and we got feedback from our classmates to help us make lots of drafts that got better each time. We also wrote reflections about the project. Here are a couple examples of rough drafts! Our finished projects are posted at school.

This week a very special guest speaker came to the fifth grade class.  Greg, a vice president of the company Adidas, came and talked to us about what he does as a vice president of such a large company.  As a vice president of a large company like Adidas, there are many responsibilities he has to take on.  Keeping factories clean and safe is hard, especially when there are almost two thousand factories to take care of in China, India, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Turkey.  80% of all Adidas’s products are made in those six countries.  He and his team make sure the workers are happy and get the money they earned, that the factory is safe, and that there are no children under the age of sixteen working.  If he finds any of theses things he may send them a letter saying that the owner of the factory has to fix the problem in a certain amount of time.  If the owner doesn’t do what he was told, they get another letter saying that they have to do it.  If they still don’t do it by the third time, Adidas will tell them they will not give them anymore work after a certain amount of time, so any raw materials already there can be produced into the product and so the workers will know that they won’t be employed in some time.  If what he and his team find is very bad, then they will just stop production immediately and never work with the factory again.   This is only a fraction of all that we learned from Greg about his job.

This week we were immersed in poetry. Each night we have been reading poetry and sharing a special poem that we liked with our class. I have read from many great poets about the sea, a woodpecker, God and more. In class we have learned about Haiku, couplets, and many literary devices. Do you know how many there are? Even more than the amount of fingers I have! I think that poetry is very important, but it can take time. Each word helps to make a whole. Not to be confused with a hole. A simple word can be the essence of a poem. The sun, a shirt, anything! Even more than the amount of my fingers and toes combined! Poetry can be hard sometimes, but everyone has a poet inside. I didn’t see myself as a poet when we started this unit. Now, I have written many poems that, in my opinion, are good. Very good! I bet you could do one too. Maybe I’ll try.

 Words are so important,

for words tell stories.

And without stories,

there is no joy.

In words.

I like that one too. I hope you like it. I can write more. Although, I’m running out of letters. Before I end it I will say. Poems are awe….. Wait, I can’t run out of letters.

This week has been extremely fun filled, and just blew by like a gust of wind on a summer day. Last Friday our class learned that we would be starting an incredibly fun project in social studies, but only this Monday did we start. Our assignment is to create a factory produced item and explain the details in paragraphs. We are split into two groups, and each group is making something different. My group focused on how we could take something that exists and make it more environmentally friendly. We have to explain our power sources, factory location, labor contract, and so on. For my group’s final part of the project, we plan to actually make a prototype of our product.

Another incredibly interesting thing that we did this week was write. Write poetry. We went into the garden one day and wrote haiku about the nature around us. We took things in everyday life and turned them into poems that only come along once in a lifetime. ”Buzz, buzz,” a bee! “Crunch, crunch,” crunching leaves! At the end of the day when I heard the intercom, dry leaves crackling underfoot, I groaned. I was sad that school was over.

cool, whispering, wind

wandering and wondering

across the fast grass

——–

silent, still, beauty

crystals, diamonds, rubies

more precious than all

———

reaching for the sun

swirling and growing with love

they’re luscious and green

Our visit to Slater Mill helped students think deeply about the birth of industrialization in this country.  The fifth graders asked incredibly thoughtful questions about life during this time period.