What is the best way to pay respect to September 11 for 5th graders?

Question

I am a 5th grade teacher, I don't want to ignore the day, what is the best way to address this so it has the most value to the students?

Answer 1

Have a big flag in your classroom or small flags for each of your students.

Recite the pledge to the flag.

Ask your students to write a short note about what 9/11 means to them.

Plant red, white & blue petunias in the school yard.

Answer 2

Discuss the history. They are ten in fifth grade, so they are probably old enough to remember something of what it was like five years ago. They will remember that everyone was upset, the grown-ups were acting strange, and the television kept playing that picture of an airplane hitting a huge building in New York. You may want to talk about how many people thought at first that it was faked; a computer-generated fiction.

They need to remember the shared experience, and they need to remember the people whose lives were ended by terrorists, and the people whose lives were changed by that. An awful lot of the people who died had young families, who have had to adjust to the loss of one or even both parents.

They should learn, too, that it had far-reaching effects, far beyond the people actually killed. For example, there were a lot of insurance companies that had their headquarters in the Twin Towers, and many of them went bankrupt as a result. The bills they were supposed to pay were not paid. The people who had claims were not paid -- or were paid a smaller amount much later, after the government agencies processed the claims through a very complicated process.

Wall Street was clearly affected by all the bankruptcies, not just the insurance companies. And many, many people who were home that day had jobs in the Twin Towers, or jobs in other buildings, even other cities, that relied on the companies in the Twin Towers.

Hospitals, mental health workers and related professionals had to hurry to understand how they could help the survivors, especially the children and spouses of the dead firemen and other rescue workers, and the people who were just doing their jobs, nothing to do with any US/Arab relations, when they were used as pawns in a terribly deadly game.

Many of the changes involved laws which restrict our freedom in the name of greater security: the so-called Homeland Security measures. I don't know how much of that 10-year-olds can understand, but maybe quite a bit. Several have probably flown in airplanes since then, and been scanned with a metal detector.

I would also give special attention to the heroism of those who, knowing it was horribly dangerous, turned aside the hijackers in Pennsylvania and essentially sacrificed themselves to bring the plane down in a less inhabited area. That was a heroic gesture that deserves to live in history. So does the heroism of the firemen and other rescue workers who rushed to help, even knowing that the building might fall on them or blow up or who knew what. All they knew was that there were people in trouble and it was their job to help, even at the cost of their own lives.

Answer 3

start the day with a prayer.
Teach about the importance of life and how we should live it!
I choose this topic because so many people do not value the life of others. They have no respect for any person or anything -not realizing that all can be taken away in a literally moment, as we saw in 911.

Answer 4

Discuss tolerance. Visit the Website of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Teach Tolerance site

There is this tendency to see people different from us as we see in the media. If we believed that people are as they appear in the media, every Black person would be a criminal or the victim of crime, every White would be someone in power, usually in the process of committiing fraud or stealing from people. Every Latino would be an illegal alien. And every Muslim would be a terrorist.

In real life, there is what I call the 5/95 law. 5% of people in any group (Muslims/Jews/French/Japanese/mothers/philatelists/goflers/bagpipe players/etc.) are jerks who are not fit to live in society. This can be because they steal, because they vandalize, because they murder, or because they commit acts of horrenous violence. The problem is that 95% of the news about whatever group is about those 5%.

When was the last time you heard a news broadcast that said "Today Margaret Matthews, a Black teen from Compton, received notice that she'd scored 2270 on her SAT's. Ms. Matthews hopes she will get into Stanford, where she plans to major in pre-med. She would like to be a doctor and will intern with Doctors without Borders this summer."

"In other news, University of Chicago college student Ahmed Ainous reports that the Arab-American student union has raised $200,000 for hurricane Katrina relief. Ainous said, "The Black student union raised so much money to help the Pakistanis following their dreadful earthquake. We thought it was the least that we could do.'"

"And finally, Maria Lopez, beloved assistant librarian and storytime reader at the La Verne public library will read Where the Wild Things Are this Saturday. This will be Mrs. Lopez's final reading. Mrs. Lopez took the part time job to help finance her children's college education. She and her husband made the final payment on their house last month, and her youngest son's final year of law school was paid in full this month. Mrs. Lopez says she has enjoyed reading to the children, and may return as a volunteer, but she wants to spend some time with her husband of 27 years, who works the last day of his part time job Sunday. Mr. and Mrs. Lopez will take a two week vacation from their primary jobs, his of an accountant and hers of an production assistant at Touchstone pictures."

In other words, nice, normal people doing nice, normal good things. Building society and making it better. That's what most of the world is like.

But it doesn't make for exciting journalism.

Answer 5

How about a minute of silence and then during the day ask them all to do a random act of kindness to someone they don't normally talk to or someone they don't know.
The next day ask them what they did, in a casual open discussion forum in class. Talk about their thoughts on kindness and what they think of 9/11. Allow all thoughts, this is not an exercise in judgement, but one of observation and sharing.

Oh, and let them know they can continue doing random acts of kindness all their lives, as often or as little as they wish.

Answer 6

i am also a 5th grade teacher..this year we are not in school yet bc of construction, but last year and when i was student teaching in 6th grade, i discussed with the kids how they felt that day...i had them write a 3 paragraph essay about who there hero is, why that person is their hero, and what characterisitcs a hero has....that helped to tie in how the heroes died that day..i made a bulletin board out of it with a flag boarder and put their papers on either red, white, or blue....when i hung them up, i made a flag with the different colors that their papers were on....i also had them share their ideas with each other if they wanted to...student teaching was the 1 yr anniversary...we had a moment of silence also, and they played god bless america on the pa....most kids were very open to talking about their feeling and my cooperating teacher advised to me let them share any thoughts they had....we all talked about where we were and how we felt when we found out....most were very open to talking about this....the big thing was to let them get out what they felt..hope this helps

Answer 7

I suggest starting a project of planting a tree,at the time of 9/11, symbolizing, life-in the memory of all who were lost,and after the planting; a moment of silence for thought and in prayer...And yes, I fully agree. open disscusions about their feelings and issues of tolerances against us,and mankind.

Answer 8

There is an excellent book that grade school children made for Septermber 11.

But... I just found this amazing website. Check it out, it will give you many ideas on how to teach them!

http://www.youngheroesofhistory.com/sept11links.htm

Good luck!! :)

Answer 9

a moment of silence at 8:46am

Make a poster of the different companies that were in the twin towers and what they are doing now.

Answer 10

Prayer, national anthem, and a 5 minute lecture against abortion.