Hello Parents, Welcome back! I hope everyone had a great Christmas! It was nice to be home with Mom. We had plenty of snow up there, so I got my taste of shoveling! :)

Reading- This week we are reading our final story in this unit. This story is nonfiction. It is about two more people that participated in some way with the Revolutionary War. One of them was part of the militia. The other was a woman name Sybil Ludington. She was similar to Paul Revere in that she went back horseback to warn the men to prepare to fight in Connecticut.  We are also reading the famous poem about Paul Revere this week.  I found a little scene from The Andy Griffith Show that really explains what Paul did that night. It is kind of funny with Barney! I am not sure if your kids will know that show or not! I may be showing my age! 

Next week will be the third unit test, so it will be test week. They will also be getting their next book report assigned. It won't be due until later in February. I am also going to try and use some of our time on Friday of next week to begin the next creative writing assignment. I will wait to see how things go. 

Math- This week they learned how to add and subtract decimals using the standard algorithm. On Wednesday, they worked on sequencing numbers. I told them this is a good thing because I believe it is on the Iowa Assessments. Basically they are trying to figure out the sequence of the numbers and then fill in the missing number. Their numbers are all decimals.  

Here is an example: $5.00  $6.75  $8.50  $10. 25   _____, _______, _______

They had to determine what pattern was created. They figured out that each time the number increases by $1.75. Now they can find the next three numbers. 

They have a couple more lessons in this chapter. I think next week we might be testing. I believe the final lesson in this chapter is about teaching them how to fill out a checkbook's record book with deposits and withdrawals.

Religion- We came back to finish up our chapter. This chapter dealt mostly with the sacraments of baptism and confirmation. They will most likely test on Monday.  Our next mass is coming up on January 20th. I wanted to let you know that after mass that day we will have a reception for you the parents or grandparents. You are welcome to join the 5th graders for juice, coffee, and donuts.  

Catholic Schools Week is coming up on January 31-February 5. Keep an eye out for a calendar of events! We are doing some fun things that week! 

Trivia Night-- The PTO is hosting a trivia night on Saturday, January 3oth at Crestmoor for adults! There will be food and drinks! Individual spots will cost $25 or you can reserve a table for your team of 8 for $200. Small groups can also come and they will join another table. There will be more info in Thursday's folder. Check it out! It could be a great night out for Moms and Dads as well as a good fund-raiser! I believe social hour is at 6:00 while the trivia game starts at 7:00. 

The ST. Malachy Dinner and Auction is set for March 5. I am hoping to get some parent volunteers to take charge of the basket for the live auction and an item for the silent auction. You can choose the item you want to take care of! I will collect the monetary donations for you from the kids! Let me know if you can help out! It would be greatly appreciated! 

I hope everyone is having a great week! It sounds like we may be getting a cold blast this weekend! Oh joy... I am ready for spring I think!

God Bless, Miss Surma

Since we won't be having school on Tuesday-- we will have our fun Christmas celebration on Monday!!!! 

Monday will be Spirit Day! $1 for sweats! They may also wear their Santa hat or reindeer antlers if they have them! 

Sack lunch needed! No drinks. Milk is provided. 

We will be singing our Christmas carols at 12:30 in the gym.

Afterwards, we will play games in our classroom until it is time to go home. No early out. Regular dismissal time. 


Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!!

Our thoughts and prayers will be with the Levine Family as well as the Turner Family during this time of sadness. May God comfort them during this holiday season. 

God Bless,
 Miss Surma

Hello Parents, I am guessing you've heard the news about Kirk Levine. May he rest in peace. As I write this, we don't know the plans for the funeral. Things may change once we know more information. Our prayers continue to go out to the Levine family during this difficult time.

Math-- This week they were learning how to add and subtract decimals using Base 10 blocks. It was a different way, but they enjoyed drawing too. This did help them visualize what happens when we group numbers or have to borrow 10.  We will be learning the traditional strategy next. We are about half way through the chapter. They will testing over it at some point when we return from Christmas break.


Reading- We read a story this week about James Forten. It was a biography. He was a free black man during the Revolutionary War time period. He was raised to work on boats mending sails, etc., but he really wanted to join the military. He did just that. He was put on a ship called the Royal Louis.  His job was to go below deck and carry up gun powder or ammunition to the men who were manning the cannons. In a battle with the British, his ship surrendered. He was taken to another boat and held as a prisoner. His fear was that the commander would send him to Africa to be sold off as a slave, which was also happening at the time. He did not. He ended up getting married and having kids. He took over the boat business he had worked for as a child and was very successful. He  also worked to abolish slavery and fight for the right for women to vote. Personally, I liked the last two stories we read because these were great stories about the men and women who lived during that time and the things they had to get through.  They will test over this on Friday. In grammar we worked on commas and semi-colons with items in a  series.

Religion-- While we have been focusing on Advent, they have also been leaving little notes and cards around the building for our employees. The card says, "You've been Rack'd!" ( Random Acts of Kindness). We have given them to the 6-8 graders for their great door decorating. This week they delivered some to Mrs. Simmons, our librarian, cooks, PE, and music teachers. The notes are thanking them for their hard work or just wishing them a Merry Christmas!

Last Day Before Break-- Students will need a sack lunch, but no drink. Milk will be provided. We will be in the gym at 12:30 singing Christmas carols. You are welcome to join us!  After caroling, I am taking them back to our room for games! If your child has  a favorite card game or board game at home, they should bring it school! I have some games for our indoor recesses, but you might have other ones at home! No electronics! This is just board game or card games. 

1st Grade Mass- Your kids were such a huge help to me and Mrs. Beardon with the first grade mass!!! They did such a terrific job of helping their 1st grade buddy! I was so proud of them. It nearly brought me to tears a couple of times! You should be proud! They really stepped up!!! 

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and New Year! If you are traveling, please have a safe trip. It doesn't look like it will be a white Christmas, but we will have a full moon!!  I will be heading to Doon on the 23rd and will stay with Mom for my break. Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! See you in January! 
God Bless, Miss Surma
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Hello Parents! I hope you are having a great week! The weather is certainly great for December! 


Religion- The 5th graders are working on the liturgical calendar. On Monday we discussed the different parts of the year the church recognizes as well as the colors and symbols that go with each. We are also discussing the Advent season. 

Mrs. Levine asked for my help with the 1st grade mass next week. I also nominated the 5th graders to help! They are very excited to help out Mrs. Levine and her students.  I am pairing the 5th graders with a 1st grader. They will help them during mass with the microphone,etc. We will also be sitting with them. The first grade class is having a reception afterwards for their parents and grandparents. Some of the 5th graders will be working there too. They will help with the serving of the beverages and snacks.   This is a great learning opportunity for them to see how we help others in times of need. You are always welcome to attend! 

Math- We started working on our decimals this week. They started with learning about the thousandths. They have also learned about how to write decimals in standard, written, and expanded form. They also learned about rounding decimals to the nearest whole number, tenths, and hundredths. We have begun adding and subtracting decimals by using Base 10 blocks. This also shows them how they can regroup their hundredths into tenths or their tenths into ones.  They have really caught on quickly! They are doing a great job!

Reading- This week they read the story of Molly Pitcher. She was a woman who also helped during the Revolutionary War.  She worked alongside her husband on the battlefield. She found a pitcher and brought the men water to help them during the battle. The men would call out to her, "Molly--pitcher!" She also helped fire a cannon when another man had been injured by the gunfire. This story also described the conditions the soldiers had to live with during the winter. They also learned how the British had a very formal way of dressing for battle and the actual fighting, but that the American men didn't always follow those ways due to the extreme heat in their summer battles.  We also discussed how different the battles were fought compared to today. I heard many of them say they really liked the story.  Their grammar this week is dealing with the tenses of verbs--past, present, and future. We discussed regular and irregular verbs. Irregular verbs are verbs that change their spelling when they move from different tenses. Write to wrote to has written or fly to flew to have flown would be examples of irregular verbs. They were also doing more work with synonyms. 

This week's test will be the 3rd week of this unit, that means they will have a cold read and 10 more questions to answer. 

Music program-- I know some of the kids won't be there on Sunday. Please make sure you write a note, call , or email Mrs. Mullin to let her know. I will see the kids on Sunday at the high school! We will be going on Friday to practice. 

Thank you for the help with the St. Nicholas Project as well as the Noisy Change Collection and the Door Contest. I know that seems like you are having to put forth extra money or your kids are, but all three things were great causes. I think it is a great lesson for them to remember others during this Advent Season.

I have been moving slowly this week after work to my new apartment, but the big stuff will happen this weekend.  I hope you have a great weekend! See you on Sunday for the Christmas program! 
God Bless, Miss Surma

Hello Parents, Happy Thursday! I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!! I had a great time in Doon and was able to put up my mom's Christmas tree for her along with some decorations outside! They 16 inches of snow they had the weekend before was pretty much gone. It looks like they got another round this past Monday!

Math- I was really pleased with the tests over division. I know there some correcting, but the mistakes came mostly from not paying attention to or misunderstanding what they were asking them to find for the answer. We have moved on to decimals! This can be confusing. They started right away with thousandths, but I think I may need to do some background work to understand the place value names better. I try to relate decimals most often to money, but we did talk about how athletes may need to use decimals when they measure their event in time. One of the hardest things to understand is that the more you work to the right of the decimal, the lesser the value. Thousandths is much different than thousands. 

Reading- This week their story was a narrative nonfiction story based on King George and his reign during the Revolutionary War. Through our readings we did discuss that he thought of himself as a father to the Americans. He considered them his disobedient children. We also discussed that every time he made a decision, the American people would fight back in some way. He couldn't seem to understand that because he thought he was a "good king". He liked the perks of being a king, but at the same time wanted to be treated normally. We also went through the story and listed some of the facts and opinions we found in it. This was a key skill for this story. We had to discuss how we can prove facts, but opinions are things we feel or think. We can't look those things up in a book or online. In grammar, they were learning the tenses of verbs: present, past, and future. We also discussed how you need to make sure that your verb tense stays the same. For example, you don't want a future tense verb being used when you are talking about something you did yesterday. Another vocabulary skill that we worked on this week was the use of figurative language. We focused on similes, metaphors, and idioms. Similes compare two different things using the words like or as. Metaphors also compare two different things, but they usually say that one thing is the other. Idioms are sentences or phrases that we can't take literally. It's raining cats and dogs. We went over quite a few of them and discussed what they meant. He bought the farm was probably the most surprising to them! On Thursday, they will get their own idiom and then they will have to draw and color a picture to match the idiom. In this case, they will draw what it would mean "literally". 

The new Book-It Calendars for December have been handed out. The goal increased to 700 minutes. I told them that this can be a hard hit month with Christmas break. I suggested they really focus their reading before break if they think they won't do much reading over the break. These calendars will be due when they get back from Christmas. 

Religion- We are wrapping up a chapter this week. I don't think I will be testing them over this one because of our break from Thanksgiving. This chapter did focus on the sacrament of baptism. They had the story of John the Baptist baptising Jesus. They also heard the story of Nicodemus and his discussion with Jesus about receiving the sacrament of baptism before going to the Kingdom. Our next chapter will be covering the liturgical calendar and the Advent Season. 

Mass- Next Tuesday we will have mass at school because it is a Holy Day of Obligation. We will NOT have mass on Wednesday. There will be another opportunity to donate money to our adopted families as well at mass. We will do another noisy collection on Tuesday. They will need to dress up on Tuesday!

Geography Bee- The 2nd round will take place at 9:15 on Wednesday. 

Congrats to Adam and Cassie Randall and the birth of their daughter, Mosley Ann! We are very happy for you! 

Our prayers continue to go out towards Ann and Kirk Levine and their family. 

Shout out to the 4th and 5th graders- they helped set up the tables and chairs for our pizza lunch on Monday for TJ and Nate Frey. They were a BIG help!!! 

Just to let you know in case your child says something, I am moving next week, but only to a different apartment in town. I am not moving out of Creston. :) Have a great weekend! I heard 50s were in the forecast! 

God Bless, Miss Surma

Happy Thursday Parents! I hope you are having a good week! I can't believe that we are already at Thanksgiving! Where is our time going???  I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving next week!
I will be heading to Doon with my mom. It has been great having her here! We even got some of her Christmas shopping done!



Religion- In your child's folder is a Random Acts of Kindness calendar. This is an Advent Calendar for them to use during the month of December. I know some of the things probably can't be done, but it's always good to just think about what we can do in this month for others besides the gifts we need to buy for our loved ones. These can make someone's day just a little brighter! 

Congrats to our Fire Prevention poster winners! 1st Place- Keely 
2nd Place-Nevaeh and 3rd Place- Reese. Keely's poster along with the winners from 3rd and 4th grade were sent to Des Moines for the state competition. 

Reading- In your child's folder you will find their scores for Unit 2 test. Scores were up overall!!! I did talk to them about some of their choices that were incorrect. I reminded them that they had to go back and look for context clues in the sentences when they want you to define a word. If it is something factual, go back to the story and find it! If they are asking you to figure out something...you need to think about everything you learned and then come up with your reasoning for what happened. On the Edit and Revise section, the most missed were dealing with punctuating sentences or even spelling. 

They will start a new story on Thursday and that will mean a spelling test too. They will take the posttest and test over the story next Tuesday. I had forgotten that they will be participating in the Geography Bee after mass next week. This will be the first round. 

Math-- We will be finishing up our math chapter this week. They will test on Monday over this chapter. We will start fresh after Thanksgiving. 

Prayer Service-- On Friday we are having a Red, White, and/or Blue Day! This is to show our support for those who died and those injured in Paris last Friday. We are also just showing our support for all the cities and countries are dealing with political issues or terrorist attacks. We will have a school wide prayer service for peace at 2:40 p.m. We are telling the kids they can wear red, white, and/or blue on Friday. I told the 5th graders that this doesn't mean sweats or crazy hair or painting our faces. A pair of jeans and a shirt or sweatshirt will do! 

Muffins with Mom-- What a GREAT turnout! We hope you were able to enjoy your breakfast with your children! Dads--not to worry! There will be a Donuts with Dad in February. 

Thank you to some of my kiddos this week! I had three boys who took it upon themselves to organize the bookshelves in my room. They arranged all the books by categories! There is a whole shelf for "girl books". :) Thank you Kyle, Nolan, and Cade!!! You rock!

Another thank you to George, Patrick, and Maddie! George cleaned up the game cupboard (indoor recess games)for me! Patrick and Maddie sorted through 2 decks of cards to make one complete deck! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! :)

Early Out- We are now getting out 2 hours early on Wednesday!!!Plan accordingly! I won't be putting out a blog next week! I hope you have a great weekend and a very Happy Thanksgiving next week! I will be taking Mom back to Doon. We will be celebrating with my sister and her family in Sioux Falls. Safe travels for everyone!!! 
God Bless, Miss Surma

Happy Thursday Parents! I hope you were able to enjoy your 3 day weekend! My mom and I had a great time in Waterloo visiting my sister and brother!

Reading- This week is the final story in this unit. They are reading a nonfiction piece called Cougars. It is an interesting story! The extra vocabulary lesson this week dealt with choosing synonyms that were stronger, weaker, or similar to the actual word. We discussed how we need to use our context clues to figure out what it means and then choose a word that would be similar. Sometimes we want that stronger word to be used because it gives a better description or a better picture as we are reading it. Our grammar this week is focusing on using quotation marks with direct quotes or when you are quoting from a text. 

They will have a unit test starting on Monday of this next week. It actually works out timing wise. They should be done testing on Thursday. On Friday, I will start a new story and spelling. I am doing that because we will only 3 days the following week due to Thanksgiving. This will give me 4 days to cover a new story. So that means next Friday they will have a spelling pretest and its posttest will be on Wednesday the following week. 

Book Reports are due this Friday

Math-- We started our week with estimating division quotients. We don't round with division, but instead use compatible numbers. For example, if I am dividing 1356 by 27, I would round 27 to the nearest ten... which would be 30. Then I need to look at the dividend and I tell the kids to look at the first two digits...1356. I ask myself, "Okay, what number is close to 13 that is divisible by 3?" "I can then divide 1200 by 30 or 1500 by 30 because 12 and 15 are both divisible by 3."  I just need to add my zeroes on. 

We also started dividing using the traditional strategy. The mistakes I am seeing so far are either in the multiplication or subtraction.  They are also checking their division through multiplication. This is where some problems come up as well because they have multiplied incorrectly or forgotten to add their remainder on. The process is going well. They will get it!! 

Religion- They did  a great job with our prayer service today! I was very proud of them. We will get back to the book tomorrow! We are finishing up our chapter on the Beatitudes.

Fire Posters-- The 3-5th graders created posters depicting this year's theme. We had the older students come in to vote and choose the top 3 in each grade. 6th graders voted on the 5th graders posters. The first place winner from each grade will then be sent to Des Moines. The local fire department no longer participates in this contest, but we wanted to bring it back! We will announce the winners by Monday for sure! 


Have a great weekend! God Bless, Miss Surma