Grade 5 students have been working hard and learning all about the different core values that have been introduced to them this semester. Our core value acronym is GRADUATE because, as 5th graders, students will be graduating from the primary division and entering middle school at the end of the school year. We believe that the core values will ready our 5th grade graduates for life as middle schoolers as well as citizens of the world. The GRADUATE core values include all the values we believe a student needs to have. Last semester, students learned what it meant to have a growth mindset, how to show respect to the people and the world around them, how to accept everyone regardless of their looks, culture, or beliefs, and how to be a determined, hardworking student.

This semester, students began by learning what it means to be unique. A unique person is someone that is unlike anyone else! We learned to celebrate our differences and love our individual uniqueness. Students immersed themselves in a variety of creative and inventive activities where they could explore and express their uniqueness and discover what makes them special.

We began with fingerprint poetry. Students wrote and designed a poem celebrating what is special about themselves in the outline of a fingerprint. Just like a fingerprint, each student is unique!

After students celebrated their own uniqueness, they were asked to begin thinking about other peoples’ differences and how to accept them. Is everyone the same? How are we similar and different? What does it mean to be different?

The unique differences are what makes our world more exciting and interesting. Students watched a video about accepting differences and then they were asked to reflect on what they learned using a “one-pager” activity.

We asked students to be proud of who they are—to be perfectly imperfect! It is important to be proud of your achievements, your hobbies, your likes and dislikes—be proud of your uniqueness! To encourage students to show off how special they are, we asked them to create their own snowflake and complete the “Mirror Mirror Activity,” where they thought about what they see when they look in the mirror.

After exploring what it means to be unique and reflecting on accepting other peoples’ uniqueness, students began learning about our next core value: accountability.

Accountability means being responsible. Online schooling requires a different level of accountability toward schoolwork. Students must now be responsible for remembering deadlines, checking Linked Classroom each day for announcements, reviewing for quizzes, attending Zoom meetings, and more! Students who have mastered the use of contact books understand the value of organizing and writing down deadlines, meetings, quiz dates, etc.

The first activity with this core value gave students the opportunity to organize all these different items into a weekly planner for them to display near their desk at which they do their schoolwork. Our hope was that moving forward, students would be able to refer to this sheet to remind themselves of all the various deadlines, activities, and meetings they need to participate in.

The aim of the next lesson was to help students be accountable and show them how to form and keep good habits. Students were reminded that accountability means you answer for your own actions and deal with the consequences. Students learned that habits and accountability are connected. If you have good habits, you will be accountable for good consequences. Students were asked to reflect on their goals and think about their habits. Students thought about the small changes they could make to their lives to start creating good habits and consequences.

One way students learned they could be held accountable for their good habits is by having an accountability partner. What this means is having someone that the student checks in with every now and then and reports on how well they have been keeping up with their goals. The second way is to create a habit tracker. This is where the students mark down each day if they have been keeping up with their goals.

Students wrote down three habits that they would do for the rest of April. They needed to choose an accountability partner and create a habit tracker. We hope students can keep organized and stay accountable for their schoolwork.

As a grade, students came together and created a video to demonstrate their understanding of what it means to be a GRADUATE. Each homeroom was assigned a core value to create a video about. All students were asked to create a poster and to reflect on the specific core value that had been assigned to their homeroom. What did that core value mean to them? How had they demonstrated that core value at school and at home? Together, the grade 5 students created a special video that shows just how much they have grown and learned over the school year.

We are so impressed with how responsible and enthusiastic the students have been so far with engaging the GRADUATE core values. We have watched the students develop as people of the world and take on these values in their day to day lives. We are so excited to keep learning about more of our values this semester and can’t wait to see what new and creative projects the students will create.

(Written by Shannen Translated by Shen Jingfeng Pictures/Videos by G5 teachers)