Meet the stars of 5th Grade! In Ms. Jeremiah’s 5th grade English and Language Arts class, the students are currently reading Because of Winn-Dixie, a novel by Kate DiCamillo. In collaboration with Science, the students were given just 20 minutes to collaborate, research, ideate, and iterate their own constellations, choosing from either the Big Dipper or Orion.

Two of Mr. Jeremiah’s students, Shardae Johnson and Angely Rodriguez, came together with their class in order to create an iteration of the Big Dipper. After some research, the girls said that they found out that the Big Dipper isn’t even a constellation! It’s actually a big group of stars known as an asterism. They also found out that by using the Big Dipper’s location, you can locate the North Star. The girls stated that at first, the class tried to create the Big Dipper pattern using their own bodies, but the class couldn’t seem to synergize accordingly so they had to come up with iteration number two!

After some thought, the students decided to create the pattern out of chairs, which worked! They collaborated with their class, sought first to listen then to understand, and in turn had a successful project. When asked, Ms. Shardae Johnson said that

…while it was hard to all come together and try to work in everyone’s ideas, it was fun to be creative and think outside of the box!”. 

Way to go 5th grade! We can’t wait to see what you do next!