“PHEWWWW!” You only have 3 more minutes left of the challenge and your entire tower just collapsed, you have to keep going. “We got this, just keep building!” One of your groupmates yells. Time passes and your tower looks like the tallest in the room until, “WOOSH!” The entire tower collapses, again! “30…29-” Your teacher chants. “It doesn’t matter if we win or not, just at least put in the effort.” You say confidently. We keep folding cards and building it higher, and higher, and higher. You place index cards on top of intex cards until the time runs out. “10…9…8…7…-” The class chants as you rush to complete your tower. “BEEP!” The time is up. Your teacher begins to walk around with a measuring stick and the intensity in the room builds. “13 inches!” Our teacher says starting with the tower to the right of us. Our team glances at each other with looks that say, “There is no way we could have beaten that,” so I respond with a look that says, “It’s okay,” When your teacher finally comes around, it’s your turn. My whole group tenses up waiting patiently for the big news. If you are interested in how tall our tower was, keep reading my blog post for more information on The Index Card Challenge and much more. This blog post features what I enjoyed during the first week of fifth grade and what I look forward to this school year. 

The two things that I enjoyed during the first week of school was the Index Card Challenge and watching the TEDTalk video, “Danger of a Single Story.” First off, The Index Card Challenge is a game where you work in a group and use 100 index cards to build the tallest structure possible in 15 minutes. I really enjoyed this challenge because it helped me envision how working in groups and partnerships will look for the rest of the year. It helped me reacquaint myself with my peers after summer break and not only did I socialize with my table but I got back into the feel of school and working together. For example, my group was struggling at the end, but we still kept going even though we knew we wouldn’t win. Our tower turned out to be 9 inches tall, we lost but we still had fun during the process. Something else I enjoyed was watching the TEDTalk video, “Danger of a Single Story.”. This story written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was an 18 minute life changing story. It was about Ms. Adichie and how when she moved to the states for college how everybody assumed she didn’t speak English and that she didn’t have basic life skills, like using a stove, just because she was from Africa. This is called the danger of a single story, like when someone points out only the poor parts of Africa and then everybody assumes Africa is a poor continent even though there are cities and places there, like where we live. This really inspired me and I never even realized that there were people that just assumed that. Some people even think of Africa as a country even though it is a diverse continent with many different countries inside of it. It wasn’t just Africa, people also made assumptions about Mexicans and countless other countries and continents. This helped me realize that you can’t just assume or summarize something about a place or a group of people.

This year I am looking forward to Capstone and Hot dog Field Day. To start off I am looking forward to Capstone for multiple reasons. One of them being the fact that I get to study my favorite topic and present a slideshow about it. I have been waiting for 6 years to do capstone after my oldest brother had it when he was in 5th grade (2019). Both of my brothers set the bar pretty high, so I hope I can reach their standards. After thinking about Capstone since my oldest brother did it I have come to the conclusion to make it about the Evolution of Women’s Fashion and How the Rest of The World has had an Impact on it. I can’t wait to do research on one of the things I am most passionate about. I am excited to share my information with my parents and the rest of the grade. I hope my slideshow really makes an impact on my viewers and also teaches me new things. Moving onto Hot dog Field Day, Field day is one of the only days of the year that all of the kids get to go outside and play field games the entire day. In this event there are various games such as tug of war, capture the flag, and gaga. All of the kids in each class dress in a specific school colors and compete to figure out the winning class. It’s specifically called Hot dog field day because for lunch, some class parents volunteer to make hot dogs for lunch. I am excited forHot dog field day specifically because it’s on one of the last days of school and it’s a tradition for only the fifth grade. I know just because I will be competing against my friends all day doesn’t mean that I still won’t have a fun day and get to have fun with them. It’s just a friendly competition so even if I lose I will still be happy that I got to experience it. Overall it seems like a fun day and I look forward to doing it.

In conclusion, I have enjoyed everything we have done for the past first week of school and there are many things I look forward to this year. I know fifth grade is going to be a blast and I anticipate this to be my favorite year out of all my years at Heathcote. How about you? What is your favorite memory from fifth grade?