Category: Fifth Grade

The fifth grade students completed writing original tall tales and shared them with their parents last week. We began this process by reading American Tall Tales by Mary Pope Osborne. There was a lot of discussion that included comparing and contrasting the exaggerated lives of the many American “tall tale” characters like Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, Davy Crockett, Stormalong and John Henry, to name a few.  We paid particular attention to the figurative and descriptive language that was used so that we could “pattern” our tall tales in a similar fashion.

Each original tall tale needed to follow a particular format that included the following:

• Describing the character’s exaggerated physical ability and personality.
• Creating a “problem” that the character can solve with their remarkable ability and solving the “problem” in a creative way.
• Weaving in some historical information of the time period, and how some famous landmarks and landforms were created.
• Concluding the tale by describing how the character dies and how they are remembered today.

Some of our characters are named:  Robin Red, Enormous Edward, Elastica, Lucy Ann, Thylacine, Florine Shannah, Raider Cramora, The Wimpy Eagle, Billy Bob, and Chris Andrew Robinson.

The tall tales will be displayed in our classroom for several weeks. Please feel free to drop in and read them!

Who doesn’t love to curl up with a good book in your pajamas?  Since Wednesday was Pajama Day here at Saklan, the 5th grade class devoted the entire morning to books and reading!

We began the day with a “book tasting.”  Each student entered the room to find a menu, placemat and book at their seat, plus many other books in the center of each table.  I let the students know they would be getting a “taste” of all kinds of new books!

They had about a minute to look at the book on their plate.  If they truly weren’t interested in it AT ALL, they could trade out their book for one of the books in the middle of the table.  Then, they began writing in their menus the genre, title, and first impressions of the book.  After that, they had about 3-4 minutes to “taste” their book.  During this time, they were reading several pages out of their book.

Each student “tasted” a total 5 different books from different genres, and also helped to recommend books to each other.  At the end of the tasting, they all ended up with a new book to read and a list of books that they can’t wait to read!

This time in science, the 5th grade studied space, orbiting objects and space exploration.

As part of their studies, they had to engineer a rocket that could cut though air resistance and gravity, and try to go the highest possible.

The fifth grade students just completed their autobiographies which culminated in sharing them with their parents and younger students.  The project consisted of 6 chapters:

Chapter 1….”My Early Years to the Age of Five”…The students interviewed their parents by asking them 20 questions.  Each child learned a lot of information and some of the responses were quite humorous!

Chapter 2…”Me Today”…The students wrote a composition in class that described their personalities, physical characteristics, qualities, and things they enjoy doing.

Chapter 3…”My Favorite Activity”…In this composition the students described a favorite activity that included a full description of the activity: Where, when, and who they do it with, as well as whey they enjoy it.

Chapter 4…”Activities The I Do With My Family”…In this composition, the students wrote about activities that they do with their family, as well as what they do with each member.  This even included their pets.

Chapter 5…”Timeline”…The students created a timeline of 20 significant events in their lives starting from birth to today; then they illustrated the events.

Chapter 6…”Choice Chapter”…..In this chapter the students were able to choose a topic of their choice that was of interest to them.

Each autobiography included a decorated cover, title page, table of contents, and photographs or pictures with captions that followed each chapter. These will be on display in our classroom for several weeks, and the students really enjoy looking at them over and over!  Please feel free to stop by and take a look at them!