Hello Parents! Wow, we are actually doing a full week of school! I am not sure we will know what to do on Friday! 😊

Covid-19 Rules-  

FERPA stands for Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. This is very similar to the hospital's HIPAA laws.  I wanted to make sure you knew that I told your kids, I cannot, by law, tell any of them or you if a student in our room or school tests positive for Covid-19. It is natural that they ask me, but I tried to explain that I cannot give them this information. It is the job of Public Health  to contact trace and make notifications to families who are possibly exposed or have tested positive. The numbers are on the rise, there is no doubt about that. Families in our community are being affected. We are continuing our mitigation procedures at STM. Just know that we as teachers cannot give out any information. 

Religion- They have finished a new chapter. This one briefly discusses all 7 sacraments and sanctifying grace. They will be testing over it on Friday. Our class will be in charge of mass on November 18. 

 Book Reports will be due on November 13. I am not sure if we will be able to share all of them on that day, but I will sure try! 

Reading- This week they read a nonfiction story on the Florida Everglades. It is a difficult story to read and comprehend because there are a lot of vocabulary words in it that are difficult. One word that comes to mind is thermoregulation! Say that 5 times fast!  Plus they talk about the animals that live there and the plants that are native to the area. This week in grammar they are working on using conjunctions and subordinating conjunctions.  Spelling is homophones! That is always a fun test to give just to see their faces. Ring and Wring! Lesson and Lessen! I did warn them that on the post test I mix them up so they need to pay attention to the sentence.  This is also our third story in the unit. That means they will get a cold read to do. They also have ten more questions. 

Math- Well, I think I have all the tests returned to me. All of them made improvements from their dress rehearsal test. I think next time, they will have to do the chapter review or test prep at home. I started this week with some division worksheets of basic facts. I wasn't letting them use their multiplication tables either just so I could see what they knew about their facts. On Thursday we will do an activity in class with division and remainders. On Friday, I plan to start the standard algorithm with them. They won't have to worry about remainders in that one. We will take it slow. I know this will throw some of them off. That's okay! We will get through it! 

Advent Angels- We weren't sure how to do this this year, but I think we have it figured out! I know this will make the kids really happy! This will start the first week of December. 

I hope everyone has a great weekend! Sounds like we should all enjoy the warm temps because they will be changing! 

God Bless,

Miss Surma