This year in social studies, the 5th grade class will be learning about the early history of the Americas and the beginnings of the United States.  As an introduction to the topic, and as a way to set class ground rules for the year, we talked about what the Constitution and Bill of Rights are and created our own version of these documents for our classroom.  The students took their job very seriously and put some thorough and careful thought into the activity.  Here are the results of their efforts (in addition to evidence of today’s writing lesson).  Interestingly enough, we also used the writing process depicted on the board to complete the documents.

Additionally this week, we kicked off our 1st trimester unit on Earth science.  We started by talking about what the students already know about how the Earth changes over time.  Students then had the opportunity to ask questions about topics that interest them or things they are wondering about.  Clearly, they know a lot already, but they asked some truly excellent questions and are poised to learn a great deal more about how the Earth changes.  We will start by learning about the layers of the Earth in the next few days and jump into the theories of plate tectonics and continental drift next week.