If you are reading this, you probably wanted to learn about how the students in Mrs. Rainey’s fifth grade class worked with one of Mrs. Gioia’s eighth grade classes to create fantastic social studies collaboration projects. I, myself, being a 5th grader participating in this project, think that this project is a great opportunity to give Mrs. Rainey’s students special insight on the classes of the middle school. Another reason why we did this project is to use the technology that the school system has so graciously provided us. Before this project began, both classes individually studied the Revolutionary War. Mrs. Rainey’s class read American Revolution books and completed projects, which they presented to the 8th graders.
Mrs. Gioia’s 8th graders had already completed research and wrote books comprised of their findings of people, battles, and important events from history during the Revolutionary War. They crammed all of these findings into a chapter book by splitting the knowledge into three time periods. The other 5th graders and I split into small groups and chose one of the three chapters to make a presentation that will be graded. As we were working, the 8th graders could check on our progress and could make comments on the computers.
One of the requirements that we (Mrs. Rainey’s class and Mrs. Gioia’s class) had to do was to make a timeline of the time period that we chose. This project really changed my view of the the 5th and 8th grade because if you think about it we are like 2nd graders to the the 8th grade, but we actually knew almost the same amount of knowledge. And after this project was over Mrs. Rainey’s class presented their group projects one by one to the rest of the class. This project was one of my favorites all year. In conclusion, I would like to say to all of the kids in the lower grades, don’t feel intimidated by the kids in the higher grades because even if they know a little more than you, they won’t try to do everything for you when you’re working together.
