Student Work - Grade 5 Language Arts(back to Ms. Hsiao's page)
Team 3 traveled to Camp Sealth on Vashon Island
recently. Upon returning, 5th
grade students practiced the craft of personal narrative writing by creating
paragraphs on things they LOVED and things they REALLY DIDN’T LIKE at camp.
The paragraphs below appear by permission of each
author. Some students preferred
not to share their work in this public way, and unfortunately a number of
students were sick and missed school the days we worked on these pieces. Let us know what you think!
Enjoy.
I loved the salad bar because I liked the crunchy sound in
my mouth and the creamy, smooth Ranch Dressing. I only took lettuce, and I only put Ranch with my lettuce,
and I only went one time. I didn’t
take any more, because one perfect salad was enough.
Abraham
What I liked about camp was the hikes. Even though it was painful, I had the
time of my life. I felt like
someone struggling for survival (in a good way.) The fresh air felt good in my brain. When I was hiking, I heard people who
were too tired. They felt like
giving up. Once, hiking in
Jackson, I didn’t think I could make it.
It made me feel sorry for them.
I would tell them in my head, “It’s okay to give up. You just have to try your hardest.” It’s a very hard talent.
Alex
Just another frigid, soaking, gray walk to dinner when, “Wow!” I could not believe my eyes! Not only one seal floating in the
freezing water, but a whole family of eight of them, floating only seven yards
away! Up, down, up they went. Then, they saw me, and all just stopped
and stared. Their plump little
bodies still, whiskers twitching, big black eyes staring straight at me. Then, gone! Swimming away.
More people had seen them and scare them away. I went back to trudging through the rain.
Beau
O MY GOSH. “What’s
that?!” I ask Bird. “What do you think?” he replies. “EWWWW!” I say. I know it’s deer poo! Gross! I know where it comes from. After that, we play levitating hoop with my group. It’s really hard. I look at the bottom of my shoe, just to
make sure there’s no poo there.
AGH! I yell in my
mind. There’s a piece of poo stuck
to the bottom of my shoe. I try
again and again to get it out, but it won’t come out! Finally it flies out.
When we leave, I hurry off.
“I HATE DEER POO!” I yell in my mind.
Cora
When we entered the canoe, swish! Tron pushed the canoe with me, Doug, Diallo and Eli. When we got pushed into the water, we
turned our canoe around and we paddled really hard and fast. We paddled by a set of poles. We looked down through the clear
water. We saw sea anemones. We thought there might be clown fish
and asked Martin, but he said no.
After that we tried to crash into martin and Ms. Hsiao’s canoe. They started paddling backwards. That looked cool, so we did it
too. We paddled so fast we went
faster than a speedboat! Then Tron
yelled it was time to come back to shore, so we did. We parked on the beach, and then we took off our life
jackets. We had to lift up the
canoes and put them up with Martin and Tron.
Dominique
Today was the worst day of all camp. It was raining bullets! It was raining so hard my waterproof
clothes felt like wet sweatpants.
they were soaking! That
day, we had challenge courses. The
long hike up, with only shorts on my legs. I wish I hadn’t packed only shorts. What was I thinking?!! Our group played games where we would
stand, freezing like popsicles.
The last game was dreadful.
We had to lie down in the wet mud.
By the end of the day all of our butts were wet, and all of us were
drenched.
Doug
Each night I loved to go to sleep, because each day we had
to go hiking and sweat a waterfall.
We would climb steep hills and fight. Doug tried to flat tire me all the way. Then, when it was all done, I went to
my cabin and fell asleep in what seemed like a white fluffy cloud of my
wonderful sleeping bag. Then, I
would wake up to another hard day of walking through waterfalls of rain, then
sleep again.
Graham
“He ha, He ha, He ha,” left right left, the sound of hard
breathing and soft footsteps. We
are walking up ‘blueberry Hill.
Every footstep is a long stride, up a windy, steep, rocky road. I take out my water bottle. There’s only one small sip left. Phoebe and I each get half a sip. Then suddenly we get excited. We see benches in the distance! UGGG. All the boys start sitting down first. No more open seats.
Hannah
“He’s coming!”
We saw his water bottle and coat.
I told the table, “Quickly!
Take all of the French toast!”
When I saw his face, it looked like his dog had just died. Then he sadly picked up his stuff. we all smirked like a smiling devil who
had just done something bad. He
then had to sit with the boys who eat like animals. It is disgusting.
Poor Mr. Schultz.
Hannah
“How much
longer?” “Aren’t we done YET?” And I think I heard the squish of
drenched socks and spirits too.
Even I, self-assigned cheerleader and Pollyanna, had to admit the
raindrops rolling steadily off my once-waterproof hood into my eyes were getting
to me. Suddenly, a small group
stopped, gathered in a perfect circle.
Five students, variably sheathed against the wet, squatted to admire a
single banana slug. It was a lone
slug in our path – triumphantly announced and briefly debated. “It’s a leopard.” “No, remember? The leopards have to have round spots.” The circle dispersed, and our march continued. A brief and unexpected respite from the
rain was over.
Ms. Hsiao
The rain was soaking through my lightweight, blue “rain”
jacket, and I hoped I could end our class early to go change. I was still wearing my pajama pants
under my jeans, not that it prevented me from getting wet. I was not even listening until I heard
something about “getting dry in your cabins,” and I sat up. Everyone seemed to be standing up and
walking towards the cabins. But I
didn’t get up or walk. I ran
before I could even lift up my body off the bench! When I got back to my cabin, I was wetter than the baby seal
I saw at the dock. I tore my
clothes off and they sat on the floor like banana peels that had gone through
the compost several times and never decomposed. I pulled out some new clothes and wrapped myself in my green
fuzzy blanket. It did not matter
that I was not going to have clean clothes tomorrow, because I was warm today.
Irene
I was very worried.
We were having a contest with the girls where the boys had a tarp and
the girls had a tarp. We had to
make a shelter with this and only the things around us. We were 15 minutes in and had nothing,
while the girls were almost done.
Hank kept getting ideas that involved sharpening sticks, which was not
the best idea. Finally he realized
and came up with a great idea! We
took the tarp and hung it on a volleyball net with some grass. This worked very well, and our fort
turned out much better than the girls’.
It felt fantastic and I am glad Hank didn’t make himself look bad.
Joel
We were in marine class at Camp Sealth, and no one was
happy. It was raining with drops
the size of my finger. My raincoat
was not even keeping me dry anymore, so that resulted in me being cold and
wet. We were walking very near the
water line to the beach, and that’s when it happened. I tripped, fell to the side and SPLASH! I was soaked head to toe. For the rest of the class, whenever I
walked, my feet would make the “squish squish” sound that your feet make when
they are wet and your socks are on.
That was the very worst part of Camp Sealth.
Joel
“Where are they all going?” I heard. “To the salad bar,” I heard again. All of a sudden, crowds were forming by
vast numbers in lines in the back.
“Well, I better go try it,” I thought. When I got there, there were millions of people and luscious
green leaves and fresh vegetables.
With the cold, crisp leaves tickling the back of my throat and the
croutons crunching in my teeth, I went to get seconds.
Jordyn
A huge circle started to form around Diallo like he was some
sort of magnet. He was
break-dancing in the middle of the floor in the Rounds Hall, and then everybody
started to chant, “Diallo! Diallo!” It seemed as if every boy in the fourth
and fifth grades was OBSSESSED with break-dancing. All of a sudden, a conga line started to form. I jumped in and grabbed on to NiRae’s
shoulders and started to dance.
Sweat was running down my face.
I was super hot, but I was having an awesome time.
Liv
The thing that I hated most was Miles’s heavy body. Why couldn’t he just have brought his
new pair of shoes instead of his old smelly shoes? I’m inside there, one hike after another. I had to walk while carrying him the
whole way from the boys cabins to Rounds Hall, up the cliff, and when he trips,
“ug.” I wish I had a fist to just
punch him all day. Why do the boys
cabins have to be so far away? At
least it was better than last year.
Last year they were 500,000,000,000,000,000 miles out of the Milky Way!
Miles
I didn’t like the wet at camp. In the night hike, it was raining and my shoes filled with
water. Still I had to hike half a
mile to my cabin. I couldn’t dry
my shoes because they were so wet.
I had to walk all day long with those stinky shoes. I hoped I could have a better heater to
heat up those shoes.
Minh
Finally, the doors opened and everyone started pouring in
like a bucket full of water tipped over!
And at that moment they started playing some of the best music I ever
heard! Everyone started to break
dance and Diallo was the champion!
But then I saw my friend, Lee, sitting far away. I went over and asked him, “What’s
wrong?” He said that Win said that
his dancing was bad. I tried to
take his mind off his misery by talking to him about iPods and taking him
outside by the fire. Cooper yelled
at us, “DANCE!!” Lee and I felt
startled, but we did anyway.
Nicholas
We hiked into the creepy-looking tunnel of trees. I felt a chill go through me, but it was
only the cold, miserable, annoying rain.
Everyone started creeping each other out, by talking about zombies, and
how “They’re going to get you!” and all that stuff. When we got up there, I never noticed how cold it had
gotten, since we started the night walk!
I forgot my rain coat because I thought it was going to be short. It watrted raining, then pouring that
when we got inside the cabin, everyone started screaming because I was more wet
than a hurricane!
Nicholas
I was so excited to go canoeing, but I had a bad feeling
about it. The water was rough and
the wind was heavy. NiRae,
Brittney, Sophie and I were 50 feet out on the water. A baby harbor seal swam underneath us. We started canoeing over to shore. I had to go to the bathroom so badly I
fell out of the canoe. When I got
on the beach I was sopping wet. I
hope that never happens again.
Phoebe
“Ssssp!” The
mouth-burning hot chocolate slid down and landed in her cup. “It is so unfair!” I puffed as my counselor slurped up the
nice, creamy hot drink! “You get
like 100 cups a day, and we get none!”
The counselors got blazing hot drinks and we had to just sit there and
watch as they gulped down the sweet chocolatey milk taste! More than anything I wanted to run over
and grab a cup. “Ahh!” I would
just have to wait and slurp down a delicious drink when I got home!
Quinn
“Hey!” I said
to my counselor. “That’s not fair!” She was unwrapping a piece of Laffy
Taffy. I could hear the wrapper
crinkling between her fingers.
Then she lifted it to her mouth and took a bite. I could see stringy green pieces
falling from her mouth. I was
starving from the hike we just did and even a piece of candy would help my
hunger. “Yum,” she said. “Can I have a little?” I asked. “Yah!” “Really?” “Sure,
when you’re a counselor!”
Ruby
Dripping wet with water as I stepped up the steps from our
three-hour long hike. The drips
from the gutter were dripping on my head.
Riley turned up the heater to 80˚F as I stepped in. It was as toasty warm as the campfire. My cheeks warmed up. It was as warm as a cup of hot tea
warming up my hands. Soon my whole
body was warm. I hung up all my
wet stuff. As I sat on my bed, I
realized the day was over.
Sarah
Mud and rain. We
had been walking for what felt like 20 hours. Grumbles about wet clothes, muddy boots, aching feet, and
cold ears were heard above the squishing boots in mud. Then everyone stopped. The words, “EWWWW,” “Gross!” and “That
is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen!” reached my ears. I hurried over to see what the
commotion was. On the ground was a
slimy, spotted slug in a patch of grass.
In my head I was thinking, “What a bunch of sissies these kids are!” The rest of the day I was fuming
over the crude remarks they gave to just a small, sweet slug!
Sophia
“I’ll be right back,” I said to the counselor. I was fighting my way to the cereal
bar. First, I loved the warm,
brown sugary oatmeal. I went crazy
with the sugar. My mom would get
so mad if I did that at home! When
I put brown sugar on my oatmeal, I would think, “mmmmmm. . . . so good.” Next, when I would get cereal (more
sugar!) it’s so crunchy and sweet that I scrape the sugar from the bottom of
the bowl and get the “mmm . . .” feeling again. It’s all yummy in my tummy!
Sophie
“Fine, I’ll clean the toilet,” I said to my cabin. Hannah and I had to clean the
bathroom. It smelled of poop and
the seat was covered in wet toilet paper.
It made me scream. All I
had was gloves and a paper towel.
As I plunged my hand in the toilet my stomach did a flop. I felt like I was going to be sick.
Sophie