Hello Parents! I hope you enjoyed your longer weekend! I got some work done and was able to finish a couple of books I was reading! Our LETRs training on Monday was good! 

Calendar Dates: 

Feb. 24- Spirit Day

Mar. 3 - Book Report Due/ Fish Fry

Mar. 4- STM Foundation Dinner and Auction

Mar.6- 9- Parent Teacher Conferences

Mar. 10-19 Spring Break

Math- Okay, we did division with partial quotients for a couple of days. Now we begin the process of learning to divide using the standard algorithm. I go pretty slow at the beginning. Some catch on quickly, others will not. I already told the 5th graders that I won't be surprised if we have some tears being shed over this. That's okay!!! It is difficult, but I promise they will learn to divide. Now, if they ask for your help at home, you can! This is stuff you learned, but if they say, "That's not how Miss Surma does it!" just know that I probably do it similar to you, but I might just phrase it differently.  I know there are going to be days ahead of us that we all get frustrated! That is normal! It happens every year! 

Reading- Due to our snow day last week and our day off on Monday, I readjusted the reading schedule a bit. They just took their test on Tuesday from last week. I am not going to have them take a spelling and reading test this Friday. We will read another story and do grammar and spelling lessons, but I am not going to test them on it. 

Book Reports are due on Friday, March 3!!! That is next Friday!!!📚📚📚

Religion- We are still in our chapter on the sacraments of healing. We filled out our Lenten promises on Tuesday. You might have a conversation with your child on what they decided to do this Lent. They don't have to give up something. They can do something instead. We are working on the GIVE part during our noisy change collections that we will hold in March. The PRAYER part will happen each week in religion. I decided I am going to take each grade to the chapel once a week during religion class and we will say the rosary together. 

Just a reminder that on Fridays, we don't eat meat. If they bring a sack lunch that day..it needs to be meatless. PB &J sandwiches, a cheese sandwich, salad with a dressing, cheese pizza meals, etc. will all work. 

Spirit Day on Friday, February 24- sweats for $1

Make sure you have signed up for a conference time! 

Have a great weekend! 

God Bless, 

Miss Surma

 Hello Parents! I hope you have been enjoying your week! Valentine's Day was a hit! They had donuts in the morning from Landen and the rest of the treats in the afternoon!  I apologize for the sugar overload! 🤣

Calendar Dates: 

Feb 20- No School/ PD Day

Feb. 22- Ash Wednesday/ 5th Grade mass

Feb. 24- Spirit Day

Mar. 3 - Book Report Due

Silent Auction- Stephanie Anderson and Jenny Studer came in to take a picture for our item! Thank you both so much for taking care of it! 

Math- We started last week and this week we are focusing on estimation using compatible numbers when dividing. They aren't rounding- they are finding the closest fact family and then dividing mentally! They are also dividing using partial quotients. That means they are dividing by groups of 10 until they can't any longer. Don't worry! That won't come home to you!!! We do that at school. It is new and I wish I had learned it when I was in 5th grade! They will be learning the standard algorithm as well.

Reading- We read a story called The Dog Newspaper this week. It is an autobiography by Peg Kehret. I suggested the kids look for her books if they like mystery and suspense! This is how she got her start in writing. She wrote about her dog who came to the US from Germany during WWII. In grammar they are working on prepositions. They have a list of common ones that I let them look at while doing their homework. This week's test on Friday will also have the cold read story and 10 more questions. This one will be worth 50 points. 

Book Reports are due in a little over 2 weeks - Friday, March 3!!!

Religion- We are focusing on the sacraments of healing: Penance and Reconciliation and Anointing of the Sick.  Due to my surgery this year they were able to take part in the latter one. We focus  a lot on how Jesus healed people during his time on earth. 

I saw my niece Emily last weekend so I got to show them the rosary she got me while in Italy. She also had it blessed by Pope Francis. I showed them a few pictures from her trip too! She went to the location where John the Baptist's right arm is buried. It's behind doors so she didn't get to actually see anything! 

Ash Wednesday is next week! 5th graders are doing mass! That is also when Lent begins so they will have to think about what they are doing for the Lenten season! 

 I hope everyone has a great weekend! 

God Bless, 

Miss Surma

 Well, we survived CSW and now we are back into our normal routine. While I love the fun, it is nice to be back in to something more normal! This won't last for long, Lent is just around the corner! 

Calendar Dates: 

Feb. 10- Spirit Day/ Super Bowl Dress Up! 

Feb. 14- Valentine's Day

Feb 20- No School/ PD Day

Feb. 22- Ash Wednesday/ 5th Grade mass

Feb. 24- Spirit Day

Mar. 3 - Book Report Due

Friday is a Spirit Day, but if you'd like to dress up in your favorite colors or team jersey for the Super Bowl this weekend, go ahead! 

Math- they took the test and many of them needed to correct so we are doing a lot of that this week. I am going to ease them into division by the end of the week. Hold on, this is a chapter where I usually have to slow down for all to grasp the process. 

Reading- This week they are reading a story called LAFFF. It is a science fiction story with a fun twist at the end. It is about a girl using a time machine. You will have to ask your kid about what happens when she does! In grammar they are working with adverbs- words that describe adjectives or verbs. Their spelling list this week are words ending in -ed or -ing. 

Religion- They just started their chapter on the sacraments of healing. Lent is around the corner! They will have to think about what they are doing for Lent. They will be meeting with their Lenten Angels soon! 

Tomorrow is Spirit Day! Sweats for $1. They can also wear their favorite team shirt/sweatshirt in honor of the Super Bowl on Sunday! 

The parent teacher conference sign up will be happening soon! Keep an eye out! 

Have a great weekend! I am heading to Waterloo for my niece Olivia's confirmation. 

God Bless, 

Miss Surma

 Hello Parents, What's that saying, "God laughs when you're busy making plans."  I feel like that is a true representation of my plans during Catholic Schools Week! 🤣🤣🤣  We are having a fun week, that's what counts!!!

Calendar Dates: 

Feb, 3- Mass @ Holy Spirit 1:30

Feb. 10- Spirit Day

Feb. 14- Valentine's Day

Feb 20- No School/ PD Day

Feb. 22- Ash Wednesday/ 5th Grade mass

Feb. 24- Spirit Day

Mar. 3 - Book Report Due

Math- so the test is taking us a couple of days to finish due to our CSW activities! I'm okay with that because I'm not sure CSW is when I want to introduce division!  Not sure there would be a lot of "soaking in" of that information! 

Reading- This week they are reading a portion of Lunch Money. It is about a boy who creates his own comic book and sells them at school for a quarter! The comic book is the size of a credit card and about 16 pages long. In grammar we are working on identifying adjectives. This can be a challenge! On Monday they had to find the adjective and then decide what it answers: how many? what kind? or origin? For example: how many- words like two, twenty-five, few, some, many. For what kind- adventure, pretty, straight, lumpy.  For origin- Chinese, American, Russian, Spanish.  On Tuesday they had to find the linking verb and then the adjective . We did that one together. The next one will be deciding where to use the articles  a, an, and the.  Those are adjectives that give you information about a noun as well! Their spelling list this week are words that end in-ed or -ing. They also noticed during the pretest that many of the words have consonants that need to be doubled! 

Their unit scores are in their folders. This was a benchmark test..which means more stories to read. The scores weren't so pretty. I can tell in some of them that they didn't look back to find the information. 

Book It Calendars- I will accept the January calendars until Friday. It's a crazy week!

Religion- They are finishing up their chapter. We are going over their study guide on Thursday, but they won't test until Monday. I am mixing up the schedule with CSW activities so that I pushed until next week. 

I hope the kids are enjoying this week as much as the teachers do! It's a crazy week, but always so worth it to celebrate our faith and our school and our STM family! Have a great weekend! It looks like we are going to have some great temps compared to what we've been dealing with lately. 

God Bless,

Miss Surma