Hello Parents, I hope you're enjoying our fall temperatures!!! I know I am! 

FAST- In your child's folder you will find their score sheet from our fall testing. It will show their score and the benchmark score we want them to reach. This will go up in the winter of course. 

Religion- We have ended our chapter. They will be taking a test over it on Friday. October is next week. That means it is the month of the rosary. The 5th graders will be focusing on that. They will have 2 prayers to learn as well as all the mysteries of the rosary. We will be saying a decade of the rosary in class each day. On Fridays I usually take the class to the chapel and we say the entire rosary.  There is going to be a prayer service next Wednesday because Father Halbur will be gone. The 8th graders will also be praying the rosary beforehand at 9:15. You are welcome to join us! 

Reading- This week they read a story called Elisa's Diary. It is about a young girl who moves from Puerto Rico to the USA. She isn't too happy about it because she will have to start at a new school and she has a difficult time speaking the English language. She can write it though. She meets a boy who is from Guatemala. He can speak English, but has a hard time writing it. They end up helping each other out. In the end we see that she has graduated from college and has become a teacher. She tries to teach her students about not giving up and getting help from others. In grammar we are working on making nouns plural and how we write them out. The lovely rules our English language has can sometimes be confusing-- you can't just add an -s or -es to all nouns.  On Wednesday they also worked in small groups and were given short passages to read and figure out the theme or lesson to be learned in that story. Then I made them get in smaller groups with other kids. They each had to retell their story and explain the theme of their story. We will be doing this again. Some didn't really pay much attention to the stories so they couldn't retell it very well or explain why they had chosen that theme. 

Next week will be a unit test week. They will not have any spelling tests. This test is a bit long so I will break it up over the week. I will also be talking to them about their first book report. They will get a packet with book report options to choose from. I also talk about writing a Halloween story. They will write rough drafts and their final copies will be typed here at school on their Chromebooks. 

Math- We are working on multiplication! On Thursday we will begin multiplying by double digits. I'm not sure how much they did that last year. The trick of course is remembering to drop the zero.  They are also working on estimating the products. 

Food Pantry- They will go back to work on Friday, October 5. 

Coin Wars- Starting on Monday we are having our challenge of collecting money for the high school fundraiser to send the veterans on an honor flight. Kids can bring in cash or coins. The class with the highest amount collected wins a prize. I told your kids that if they were thinking of bringing in big amounts they had to get permission from you FIRST! It is a worthy cause. That will run from Monday to Friday. 

Book It-- This will start on Monday. I will give them a calendar to record their minutes on. The goal for October is 600 minutes, which is about 20 minutes a day. You will need to sign it at the end of the month and have them return it so they can get their Pizza Ranch or Pizza Hut coupon. Pizza Ranch changed theirs to be $4 off a student buffet. At the end of the 6 months, I usually give prizes out to those who read 5 or 6 months of the challenge. 

I hope everyone has a great weekend! I am heading to Waterloo and Dubuque. My niece plays soccer on the Loras college team. I am going to go watch her. Hopefully the rain will stay away. 
God Bless,
Miss Surma