5th Grade Top Ten

We are in the home stretch! Two more weeks until the end of the year.  This is bittersweet for me since I love my class…but I also love summer.  I thought it would be fun to talk a walk down memory lane and think about all of the good things that happened this year, my first year as a fifth grade teacher.

In no particular order:

1. Exhibition. My students did such an amazing job with creating their student-created units and presenting them to the school and their parents. It was a lot of work, but completely worth it. My students were so engaged throughout the entire unit, and they loved it.
2. Read aloud. We read aloud some fantastic books this year, from a wide variety of genres. It is one of our favorite times of the day, and we have great conversations about these books and characters.
3. Science experiments. My students love science experiments, and they are very engaged with every experiment. They want science all day, every day.
4. Just talking with my students. Whether during Morning Meeting or recess or art time, it was always nice to get to talk to my students. They are so interesting and easy to talk to.  We talk about big and small things, and they always make me laugh.
5. Skits. My class was very theatrical. They loved doing skits; any content area, any topic, they were game.  They could turn anything into a skit, and they were so funny.
6. The Puberty Talk. They got their first puberty talk this year at school, and they were so nervous about it.  It was hilarious to watch them squirm as they learned about their changing bodies. When it was over, they realized it wasn’t so bad after all. The talk wasn’t too bad anyway; the changes, well they are scary.
7. Sports Day. As the oldest students in the school, they really stepped up and helped the younger students with the activities we did that day. It was fun to spend the day outside with them and watch them be leaders.
8. Yearbook club. I could always count on my 5th graders to do great work on their yearbook pages. And they were always so patient in helping the other students with their pages. They remembered how to do things on the yearbook software that I didn’t even remember from week to week.
9. Collaboration in math. They work in partners in math and have really learned a lot from each other. There is something special about having a peer explain something when the teacher’s explanation didn’t cut it. I heard such great conversations about math this year.
10. Middle school jitters. As the end of the year draw nears, my students are very nervous about going to middle school. Since we are a small private school, they are scattering to many different schools next year. There is so excitement, but also a lot of apprehension. I have answered many questions about middle school life. They’ll be great in middle school, but the unknown can be scary.

All in all, I would say that it’s been one of my best years as a teacher.