This is Me in Grade Five
I really liked 
ohiblather's journal entry today about what she was like when she was ten. Being that I teach ten-year-olds every day, it is interesting to think back to when I was the same age.
When I was in Gr. 5 my teacher was Mrs. Helferty. I knew her very well because she was the mother of one of my best friends, Maura Helferty, and Maura and I lived quite close to each other, so we used to be back and forth from each other's houses all the time. Since there was only one Gr. 5 class at St. Michael's School, Maura was in my class, too, and I used to think it would be very strange to have your mother as your teacher, too.
My best friend in Gr. 5 was Sheila Bennemeer. We were inseparable. We also lived very close to each other (in the small town of Dunnville, most of us lived close to each other) and spent a lot of time at each other's houses. I remember Sheila's mother used to do a lot of sewing, though I can't recall if she did that as a job. Sheila's family had a Dutch background, she was as blonde as I was an Irish redhead, and one of my favorite treats was sitting in Sheila's kitchen eating slivers of Dutch cheese.
Sheila and I always worked as partners on class projects. We made a good team because I was good at writing, research and public speaking and Sheila was excellent at building things, making things with her hands. I remember the coolest science project we ever did together was building a tornado in a box (probably around Gr. 7). It was all glass and wood with a heating element underneath and as great as it looked, we -couldn't- get it to produce a tornado. We finally gave up and took it to class to present anyway. We set it up for the Science Fair and, voila!, if the crazy thing didn't work just before the judges came to us. We were torn between "Oh, my goodness! It's working! It's working!" and our calm exterior for the judges, "See? A tornado. -Of course- it's working.".
Sheila and I also made a salt and flour map of Africa for a Gr. 5 class project. I remember splitting up all the countries and painting them blue and green.
In Gr. 5 a girl named Rosemary in my class threw a birthday party. It was a prestige Gr. 5 event and all the girls wanted to go. Rosemary was very pointed and insensitive with her invitations- you were either "in" or "out". I wasn't invited to the party. That birthday party caused major rifts among the girls in our class and out and out war at recesses with divisions between the girls going and those who weren't. Sheila and Maura were invited and it looked like the party fights in the school ground were going to sever our friendships forever. I was heart-broken. My parents had me invite a friend over on the night of the party and Kathy and I had a good time. The next day Maura Helferty called me looking to bury the hachet. It seems our teacher, Mrs. Helferty, was determined our friendship wasn't going to be destroyed over a junior socialite party :). Sheila and I quickly patched things up, too, but it's still insightful as a Gr. 5 teacher to remember how much those few weeks of schoolyard battles hurt.
(Aside: It's still my observation as a teacher that ten-year-old boys fight by beating on each other, clearing the air and returning to friendships the next day. Ten-year-old girls fight by innuendo and gossip and turning friends against each other (the ever-popular "You can't be my friend if you're her friend.") allowing grudges and resentments to bubble under the surface for weeks before they explode, if ever. The boys are more likely to end up in trouble than the girls for their behavior, it's harder to detect the girls fighting, but there's no denying the girls' tactics are often more devestating.)
I had one line in the Gr. 5 play in the school Christmas Pageant. The play was about Santa being stuck in a chimney and I came out at the very end of the scene with a tray of treats and said, "Did someone say something about cookies?".
In Gr. 5 I had a mad crush on Keith Partridge. I had posters of David Cassidy on my wall and I kept scrapbooks where I would paste magasine and newspaper articles and write out summaries of "The Partridge Family" episodes. "The Partridge Family" and "The Brady Bunch" aired back-to-back and the following day each week the Gr. 5 girls would hash out the new episodes in the school ground. I used to have a deal with my parents for buying "Partridge Family" albums. If I saved half the money for an album, they would finance the rest. I can still sing most of the songs on those albums. Much to Jodi's horror :).
In Gr. 5 I discovered science fiction through Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle In Time". My reading habits and hobbies would never be the same. In Gr. 5 my parents bought tickets for us to see the musical "Anne of Green Gables" and my mother encouraged me to read the book before going to the musical. I don't recall being very enthused at first, but soon enough I became enchanted with L. M. Montgomery's world of Avonlea and devoured all of her books at the local library. At the same time my friend Sheila was devouring every "Little House On The Prairie" book she could find. I never did get much into Laura Ingalls Wilder's books, but I can still picture clearly where the Montgomery and Wilder books were on the shelves in the children's room of that small library by the river.
I haven't seen either Sheila or Maura since Gr. 8. Sheila and I wrote to each other for a few years after I moved to Hamilton and eventually stopped. I sometimes wonder how their lives turned out.
QUESTION:
Tell me a memory you have from when you were in Gr. 5. Where did you live? What was your Gr. 5 class like? Who was your teacher? Who were your friends? What highlights stand out for you?
ohiblather's journal entry today about what she was like when she was ten. Being that I teach ten-year-olds every day, it is interesting to think back to when I was the same age.When I was in Gr. 5 my teacher was Mrs. Helferty. I knew her very well because she was the mother of one of my best friends, Maura Helferty, and Maura and I lived quite close to each other, so we used to be back and forth from each other's houses all the time. Since there was only one Gr. 5 class at St. Michael's School, Maura was in my class, too, and I used to think it would be very strange to have your mother as your teacher, too.
My best friend in Gr. 5 was Sheila Bennemeer. We were inseparable. We also lived very close to each other (in the small town of Dunnville, most of us lived close to each other) and spent a lot of time at each other's houses. I remember Sheila's mother used to do a lot of sewing, though I can't recall if she did that as a job. Sheila's family had a Dutch background, she was as blonde as I was an Irish redhead, and one of my favorite treats was sitting in Sheila's kitchen eating slivers of Dutch cheese.
Sheila and I always worked as partners on class projects. We made a good team because I was good at writing, research and public speaking and Sheila was excellent at building things, making things with her hands. I remember the coolest science project we ever did together was building a tornado in a box (probably around Gr. 7). It was all glass and wood with a heating element underneath and as great as it looked, we -couldn't- get it to produce a tornado. We finally gave up and took it to class to present anyway. We set it up for the Science Fair and, voila!, if the crazy thing didn't work just before the judges came to us. We were torn between "Oh, my goodness! It's working! It's working!" and our calm exterior for the judges, "See? A tornado. -Of course- it's working.".
Sheila and I also made a salt and flour map of Africa for a Gr. 5 class project. I remember splitting up all the countries and painting them blue and green.
In Gr. 5 a girl named Rosemary in my class threw a birthday party. It was a prestige Gr. 5 event and all the girls wanted to go. Rosemary was very pointed and insensitive with her invitations- you were either "in" or "out". I wasn't invited to the party. That birthday party caused major rifts among the girls in our class and out and out war at recesses with divisions between the girls going and those who weren't. Sheila and Maura were invited and it looked like the party fights in the school ground were going to sever our friendships forever. I was heart-broken. My parents had me invite a friend over on the night of the party and Kathy and I had a good time. The next day Maura Helferty called me looking to bury the hachet. It seems our teacher, Mrs. Helferty, was determined our friendship wasn't going to be destroyed over a junior socialite party :). Sheila and I quickly patched things up, too, but it's still insightful as a Gr. 5 teacher to remember how much those few weeks of schoolyard battles hurt.
(Aside: It's still my observation as a teacher that ten-year-old boys fight by beating on each other, clearing the air and returning to friendships the next day. Ten-year-old girls fight by innuendo and gossip and turning friends against each other (the ever-popular "You can't be my friend if you're her friend.") allowing grudges and resentments to bubble under the surface for weeks before they explode, if ever. The boys are more likely to end up in trouble than the girls for their behavior, it's harder to detect the girls fighting, but there's no denying the girls' tactics are often more devestating.)
I had one line in the Gr. 5 play in the school Christmas Pageant. The play was about Santa being stuck in a chimney and I came out at the very end of the scene with a tray of treats and said, "Did someone say something about cookies?".
In Gr. 5 I had a mad crush on Keith Partridge. I had posters of David Cassidy on my wall and I kept scrapbooks where I would paste magasine and newspaper articles and write out summaries of "The Partridge Family" episodes. "The Partridge Family" and "The Brady Bunch" aired back-to-back and the following day each week the Gr. 5 girls would hash out the new episodes in the school ground. I used to have a deal with my parents for buying "Partridge Family" albums. If I saved half the money for an album, they would finance the rest. I can still sing most of the songs on those albums. Much to Jodi's horror :).
In Gr. 5 I discovered science fiction through Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle In Time". My reading habits and hobbies would never be the same. In Gr. 5 my parents bought tickets for us to see the musical "Anne of Green Gables" and my mother encouraged me to read the book before going to the musical. I don't recall being very enthused at first, but soon enough I became enchanted with L. M. Montgomery's world of Avonlea and devoured all of her books at the local library. At the same time my friend Sheila was devouring every "Little House On The Prairie" book she could find. I never did get much into Laura Ingalls Wilder's books, but I can still picture clearly where the Montgomery and Wilder books were on the shelves in the children's room of that small library by the river.
I haven't seen either Sheila or Maura since Gr. 8. Sheila and I wrote to each other for a few years after I moved to Hamilton and eventually stopped. I sometimes wonder how their lives turned out.
QUESTION:
Tell me a memory you have from when you were in Gr. 5. Where did you live? What was your Gr. 5 class like? Who was your teacher? Who were your friends? What highlights stand out for you?