Hello Parents! Hopefully your week is going well for you! 

Reading-- Please take a look at your child's reading test score from last week! Overall, these were the highest scores I have seen yet! I was so excited and proud of them! I thought the test questions were a little harder, but I guess that shows you what I know! HA! This week we read an excerpt from Old Yeller.  We are talking about how the two boys in the story react to the situation, trying to pick up on similarities and differences.We also talked about the dialect. The story takes place in Texas many years ago! I told them this is a classic and was made into a movie.  One of the other things we are focusing on are Adages and Proverbs. What is that you ask???  Haste makes waste. All good things must come to an end. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.  Do any of those sound familiar? We worked on those in our center times. Many of them hadn't heard of them before, while others said, "My mom says that all the time!"  Feel free to replace "mom" with dad, grandma, or grandpa!;)


Math-- We have started division! We are only dividing by one digit so far. I really want them to understand the process before we move on. There will be other division strategies they will learn in this chapter. Just like in the last chapter, when they told me they couldn't divide, and I reminded them they know the Divisibility Property now! That is a strategy they can use to divide.  It wouldn't hurt to quiz them on their math facts at home, or while you're out running errands, or on a car ride somewhere.  I am still working on corrections with some of the kids and their math tests. Sorry for the wait, but I usually have to wait for some free time to be able to sit down with them. 

Halloween Stories-- I am also near the end of editing the stories. Some of the kids have gotten their story back and are supposed to type it up. I gave them a week to do that. I let them know their due date as well. Due dates are different depending on what day they get it back. If you are having computer problems, please email me and we can set up some time before and/or after school time. They can work in the library to get it typed up. 

Religion- This week they are looking up the mysteries of the rosary in the Bible. All of these mysteries stem from something that happened to Mary or Jesus. They are finding those stories now before they have to really learn or memorize them. 

Book Orders- Just a reminder that I sent home the order forms last week. They are due on Friday. You can also place your order online instead of turning in the money and order slip to me. 

Book Reports-- These are due November 7,2014. That is 3 weeks from Friday. 

I hope everyone has a great weekend. I head to Doon again on Friday. This should be the last time I HAVE to go. I think my sister should be driving next week. God Bless, Miss Surma

Hello Parents! I hope you have had a good week!

Reading- In your child's folder will be a letter and a score sheet from last week's unit test. I tried to explain in the letter what each test covered. I don't need those score sheets back. That is for you to keep. This week we are reading a story on a team of scientists researching the tree kangaroo or tree 'roo.  We are also beginning to work on verbs: action and helping verbs. We also read a myth about how the koala bear got its short tail. They are taking the weekly test and spelling test due to not having school tomorrow. Next week will be back to regular schedule.

Math- I have scored the tests, but I am now working with kids individually on the corrections. As soon as I have met with your child and they make the necessary corrections, I will send their test home. We will start our next chapter today. It begins with division. They will learn the traditional strategy for division, but they will also learn new ways to divide. This last chapter taught them to divide using the Distributive Property. I think giving them more than one to solve the problem will help those kids who struggle. They can pick a way that works for them in the end, but should try to do all the possible ways.

Religion- Most of the kids have already passed their two prayers! Woo hoo! The next step will be learning the Mysteries of the Rosary. There are 20 total. We will learn one mystery at a time. We will do a little research in the Bible to find where the stories are located.


Book Orders- They are in your child's folder. They will be due by next Friday, October 17. 

Class Meeting- I am reading the book Wonder aloud to the class. They are really enjoying it. It is a great story about bullying. The boy August has some facial deformities from birth. He was homeschooled, but then ends up going to school in 5th grade when his parents decide it is time. The kids have been very sympathetic to August as I read. Last week, he was totally shocked when he heard his "best friend" talking about him very negatively. I told the kids to write August's friend Jack a letter from August's point of view expressing what he had heard and how it made him feel. They shared their letters yesterday! WOW! They were so good! I will be sharing them with you at conferences.

Have a great weekend! I brought Mom home last weekend because she was ready to be at home, but my sister is still unable to drive. I am heading there tomorrow after work so that I can take care of the meds,etc. I will be back on Sunday! Mary should be driving in another week or so.
God Bless, Miss Surma

Hello Parents, I hope you have had a good week so far!  I can't believe we are in October already! WOW!

Reading- The kids are still finishing up the first unit test. I will send you scores next week when I am done checking everything.  I also gave them their first book report assignment. This isn't due until November 7. That gives them plenty of time to read a book and put together the project. I changed up my projects this year. I was getting tired of the same ones so I found some new ways to share the book. They only choose 1. They have a packet with all the projects listed and what is expected for each one. I am excited to see what they come up with! If you need poster paper or construction paper, I can supply that to them. If you do more than that, you will have to do some shopping. Some of the students have already picked out the book they want to share.

On Friday, I will share with them some of my favorite Halloween stories that my 5th grade teacher read to us. They will then begin writing their own Halloween story. This is one of my favorite projects. I do tell them that their story cannot have any blood or gore described in detail. I am not wanting Nightmare on Elm Street kinds of stories. I like scary or surprising, fun stories...keep it age appropriate.

Math- We will be finishing this chapter up this week. They should be testing on Tuesday of next week. We will be working on reviewing on Friday and Monday. This week they wrote algebraic expressions and learned about the order of operations in algebraic problems.

Religion- I have given them a copy of the two prayers they are to memorize. I told them that starting on Thursday, we will use one of those as our closing prayers before going home. I will quiz them on it beginning next week with Hail Holy Queen. They were quick to remember this was TJ's favorite prayer last year. We will also be saying a decade of the rosary each day.

Homecoming-- Friday is black and red day! It is time to show your support for the Creston Panthers. We are dismissing at 1:10 on that day.Homecoming Float: The Civics Club is putting together a float for the Homecoming parade tomorrow. Any St. Malachy student may ride the float and help distribute candy. Students can get on the float at the beginning of the parade - on Prairie Street east of Sycamore. Students are to be picked up at the Holy Spirit Church parking lot following the parade.

I hope you have a great weekend. I am heading to Doon with my mom. We are going to my niece's wedding, but Mom will be staying in Doon. I think she is tired of being here with me! :) She wants to be in her yard, raking! God Bless, Miss Surma

Hello Parents! I hope you are having a great week! I hope everyone enjoyed Balloon Days even though they never went up! I had a great time with my family in Waterloo and the Panthers won their game!

Reading- This week is our last story in this unit. That means next week will be our first big unit test. ding-It will cover all the skills we learned about during these past five stories. The benefit I see for the kids is that the opportunity to go back over the story and search for an answer is a possibility in the unit tests. They don't get that chance in our weekly tests. They need to use that little gift! The tests are not timed, so they should not rush through them.  This will mean NO spelling tests next week.

I will also talk to them about their first book report next week. We may also be starting their first big writing project. It will be a Halloween story. I like to start now because it does take time to write and edit. Plus the final draft has to be typed. I will give them due dates after editing, but I usually give them a week for typing. If you don't have a computer working at home, let me know. When that time arrives, we can make arrangements to use the computers in the library before or after school. If your printer is down, email me a copy of the story. I will print it off here. That will happen later though. We need to write them and get them edited first!

Math- We are nearing the end of our first chapter. I think I threw them a curve ball on Wednesday, so I may have to slow things down a bit with this lesson. I would think a test may happen towards the end of next week or the beginning of the next one. This is challenging stuff and some today were ready to call it quits. I told them to keep pushing at it and not give up! We can't have that negative "I can't" talk or we will be finished. I know they will get it! They just don't like the change from multiplication to division. It feels backwards to them. That's okay, we will work through it!

Religion- First, they did an AWESOME job at mass today! I was so proud of them! I know it is difficult getting up in front of your peers, but they were calm and collected. I loved that 3 of the girls were nervous, but sang the Psalm response anyway. Thank you, Mrs. Mullin, for working with them on that! They did great! Maybe some others will want to try it for our next mass??

The chapter we are working on now is over the Beatitudes. They are at the end of this one as well. They will be testing over it on Monday. Our next  piece won't be in the book. October is the month of the Rosary. The 5th graders have 2 prayers to learn as well as all the  decades. We will do that in class as well as say some of the Rosary each day. On Fridays during October, we will say the whole Rosary.

I hope everyone has a great weekend! God Bless, Miss Surma

Happy Thursday Parents! I hope you are having a great week! 

Religion- Just a reminder that the 5th graders first mass is next week!! You are more than welcome to come and attend mass. We'd love to see you there! They have their parts. Any reading parts should be practiced at home. We will practice next week in class as well. Mrs. Mullin is working with three of the girls. They are going to sing the response as well as lead the songs.  In religion class we are working on understanding the Beatitudes right now. We have been discussing ways people live them out each day, and generate ways that they can do the same. 

Math- This week we've worked on multiplying by one and two digit numbers. I have been really impressed with the class as a whole with this concept. The next few lessons in this chapter will be different than anything I am used to teaching, so I think we will all be learning something new. 

Language Arts- This week we read a story about a teacher who organized a double Dutch team at his school. Some of the girls are now practicing and trying to teach themselves this at recess. I think that is awesome! We are also working on skills like sequencing events in the story. They did more work on common and proper nouns as well as compound sentences.

Book Reports- The kids are asking me about when I will assign them their first one. I have decided to wait until October. I want us to get a full month under our belts before adding that assignment.

Have a great weekend! Mom and I are headed for Waterloo/Cedar Falls to see my sister and brother. God Bless, Miss Surma 

Hello Parents, I hope you're having a great week!  Below you will see the picture of our poster after Wednesday's class meeting. They watched a couple of short videos about bullying and what a school is doing to stop it. Then we "erased" the meanness from last week's poster and answered the question, "How do you want to be remembered?"

Religion- They took their first test today. Our first chapter covered the Creation story as well as the Blessed Trinity. They had to draw a picture of one thing that could contain 3 things to represent the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Below you will see pictures of their work. I will post other pictures later.

Reading- This week's test on Friday is our 3rd test in the unit. This test will have a "cold read" story for them to read along with 10 questions. They will also have questions over the story that we read this week. In our small group time, they worked on comparing and contrasting with a Venn Diagram  about characters in the story. They also worked on vocabulary and figuring out the meaning of a word using the context clues in the sentence. This seems to be a difficult thing to do for some. They really need to slow down and pick up on the clues in the rest of the sentence and figure out what those words mean or could be giving a clue to.

Math- I am more excited today!! They begin to multiply! This first part should be review for them. They have to multiply a three digit number by a single digit. We will also be working on some estimating. They just need to remember to estimate BEFORE they work it out. We will go over that as well.

On Wednesday, September 10, we celebrated 2 birthdays! We celebrated Sarah's 10th and we also celebrated TJ Frey's 12th birthday. I brought in some "sticky" treats for him! We will celebrate Nate before we leave for Christmas. It was nice to just take time to remember those boys, not that we will ever forget.

Have a great weekend! I am heading home for the weekend to participate in the Alzheimer's Walk in Sioux Falls, SD with my niece and sister. We are TEAM SURMA...for both of my parents having been diagnosed with this disease. Stay warm! I can't believe I am saying that! God Bless, Miss Surma

Hello Parents! Happy Thursday! I hope everyone had a great Labor Day weekend!

Class Meeting

On Wednesday, we have our class meetings. This week they worked in small groups using a thesaurus. They were to look up synonyms for the words bulling, mean,  and hate. In the picture they are busy writing their words on a big poster. Next week we will continue with this poster with a discussion on how we can erase "meanness" from our classroom and school.  We also reviewed being a Bucket Filler to each other and other kids in our school. One of the things I reminded them of was that we don't get the bucket filler slips to pat ourselves on the back or to keep score of how many we get. The goal is to change our way of acting and treating others. The goal is to be the person we know God wants us to be. To strive to be more like Jesus and help those people we see in need no matter what that looks like to others.

Reading-- I put a copy of your child's first score sheet from last Friday's test in their Take Home Folder. You can keep that copy. I will send one home every week of the previous Friday's test. I was really pleased overall with the scores. If your child didn't do very well in an area--like decoding,  I went over that with them again just to see what they were thinking. It was pretty great! They told me instantly what they should have chosen. They need to be careful on that piece of the text and make sure they are breaking the word up correctly with the syllables. They need to slow down there and just sound each option out before choosing.  This week they read a play in class about two girls who are at a summer camp. There is a mystery involved. Ask your child about it?

Math- We are working on place value. On Tuesday and Wednesday we went over the different properties for addition and multiplication. They knew two of them from learning it in previous years. This year they are adding the Distributive Property. I haven't really sent home a lot of their math work. I am trying to figure out if I should keep it to give me a better idea of where your child is finding success and what could be a struggle. We do a lot together and I have done some group work and partner work with them. 

Book Orders are due today, but if you forgot--send it in on Friday. I will put the order in this weekend. 

I hope everyone has a great weekend! Sounds like the weather is going to be great! 

God Bless, Miss Surma