Ms. Elson's Fifth Grade

Ms.
Elson loves nature and science. She has a real passion for the
environment. She leads the class in recycling and composting for the
whole school She helps to plant and harvest the garden. She is good
teacher who knows how to have fun.
Our class is made up of 18 fifth graders! Our
classroom has a lot of microscopes
in it. There are enough microscopes
that everyone could use one. We also have Writers in our classroom. A
Writer is a portable machine that will allow typing practice and
writing stories.
Our class is
the head of recycling
in
our school. Each week, we collect all the recyclables in the school. We
are weighing the recycling and
putting the information on a chart. We
are going to make a graph to show how much we have recycled.
Each day we compost
at lunch. There is a day
by day list of who composts. We do not have to work at the composting,
it is a choice. We are also charting and graphing how much we are able
to keep out of the garbage.
We have a rowing machine in our classroom. We
are trying to row enough miles that it would be the same as rowing to
Rye, New Hampshire. We are going to map the distance that we have
virtually rowed.
We have social studies with Ms. Douglas. We are
working with the Rokeby Museum.
They have brought in artifacts for us
to try and figure out how they were used and who might have owned them.
We are studying our ancestors.
We have four computers in our room. We use them for
typing stories. At inside recess, we also get to play games on them.
We went on a
lot of
field trips at the beginning of
the school year. We went paddling on Otter Creek and Dead Creek with
the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum. We stopped and looked for
macroinverterbrates. We used a strainer to find them. They are small,
but you can see them without a microscope. We went on a wetlands field
trip. We also were lucky enough to go to Rye, NH to go on a whale
watch. While we were there, we saw a finback whale and her calf. We saw
a humpback whale and a pod of dolphins.
We have a buddy program with Ms. Hibbard's second
grade. We work in the garden
with them. Our
school garden has a lot
of different vegetables in it. We grew butternut squash, zucchinis,
tomatoes, peppers, carrots, lettuce, black beans, garlic, basil and
parsley. We planted last year in the spring and harvested this fall.
Most of our class is involved with band. Mr. Bowers
is the conductor and our band teacher. We have concerts during the year
and in the spring, we march in the Memorial Day Parade.
We are going to get new playground
equipment installed this fall. It looks great and we can't wait to be
able to be playing on it for the next two years.
We think fifth grade is the best group of kids in
the school! All of our teachers love us and we love to learn.