The 5th graders taught a lesson (as a group) to the 3rd graders on Quality Commenting. Then, on Thursday, the 5th graders paired with the 3rd graders to help them use the skills they were taught to write quality comments on the 4th graders’ blogs. Each 5th grader worked with 1-2 3rd graders, and the results were quite impressive. I was amazed with the patience, enthusiasm, and true knowledge of the content they each shared with the 3rd graders. Here is an example of one of their comments:
Dear Zach,
That was a cool video. I like reading. Now I like baseball. Was that video made because you like
baseball? And why do you like baseball? What are your favorite baseball teams?
Thank you,
Benjamin
We also started to discuss our next phase of our poetry book. The students came up with so many questions.
- When will we publish it?
- What will we charge?
- Will we do an e-book, a paperback, or both?
- Who will our audience be?
- How will we market it?
So many questions, and so much to do…The students developed a list of jobs (with my guidance) that would be needed to begin to answer these questions. Once the job list was complete, they had to determine what job would best suit each of them. Each student developed a resume and applied for one of the positions. I was thrilled to see that they each applied for positions, which really emphasized their strengths. I was also equally surprised that they all (for the most part) chose a different job. After receiving all of the resumes, Silvia, Andrea, and I looked over each resume to decide who would be “hired” for each position. Fortunately, they made it very easy on us. We ended up hiring Benjamin as our VP of Finance, Jamie and Itamar as our VP’s of Marketing, Zoe as our VP of Design with support from Evelyn and Ben, Jonah as our editor, Gil as our publishing liaison, Rebecca as our VP of Public Relations with Zachary’s support, and Elior as our VP of Business. They all have a list of their job descriptions and they will be reporting directly to Mike Fisher and myself on a weekly basis. This project will continue into next year, so I look forward to working with the Middle School teachers. The 4th graders will also be choosing the areas that they feel suit each of them, so they can be on a collaborative team with the 5th graders.
What tips do you have for the 5th graders in their new business endeavor?
