* Bring Recorders on Mondays
* Gym uniforms on Thursdays
* 2/10 Gr 3-5 Mass
* 2/12 Red/White DDD 
* 2/17 Ash Wednesday Mass
* 2/23 Reconciliation

Hi Parents! 

What another eventful week! We were busy with wrapping up a few units, starting off with some new ones, a few projects, crafts, and holidays. We wrote love letters, brainstormed personal narratives, attended mass, and learned about the Chinese New Year. Hopefully our dragons made it home safely! Of course the kiddos are coming home with LOTS of sweet treats for Valentine's Day! Your homes should be well stocked for a while! Thank you for sharing all your sweet treats with the class. 

I'm in the process of posting new pictures to our 5th grade webpage, so be on the lookout for those shortly.

Thank you again for your understanding and patience with emails and messages back and forth. I'm still using many devices on a daily basis as well as all the regular paperwork coming in from the students and then getting it back to them. And then we have lots of extra info/details to track and document in this crazy year. And the regular curriculum of course. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming....  :) 

Next week: 
Wednesday - CE Due
Thursday - Rdg WLT
Friday - Spelling 16
             Religion Prayer to the HS Test

Have a wonderful weekend! Let's keep the white fluffy stuff to a minimum, shall we? 

God Bless You! 

What a crazy, busy week. To start online and then back in school with a 2-hour delay. We tried to get in as much of our CSW plans as possible - just slightly rearranged. We started planning love letters for next week - be sure to ask your child about that. We jumped for the American Heart Association. We made Superbowl predictions. We enjoyed our Spelling Bee - congratulations to our top 3: Dylan, Grace, and Debbie. It was close, but Debbie is the 2021 5th Grade Champ headed to the SJS finals next week. We cheered for some local heroes with the truck convoy. I'm exhausted! 

Friendly reminder as I've been telling the class: The end of the trimester is right around the corner at the end of the month. I've encouraged everyone to check on their grades and see if there is one (or a few) they would like to work particularly hard with improving. We are looking at ~2 more grades for each subject.

Next Friday, we'll have our Valentine's Day celebration. We have 17 students if your child would like to share Valentines. You can start to send these items in as soon as Monday so they can quarantine before the end of the week. As we regularly do, we will sanitize our hands and wear gloves as needed to pass out these items. 

Next week: 
Monday - bring in science project supplies
Tuesday - SS Ch 6 Test
                Packet Due
Wednesday - CE Due (rescheduled from last week)
Friday - Spelling Lesson 15

Have a great weekend! God Bless You!

Hi Parents, 

Welcome to our new year! We are all glad to be rid of 2020! Most of our CEs that came in this week were happily written about the new year. We are off to a good start: we surpassed our December minutes goal, we worked on and finished our plant brochures, and we got to see the eagles on the Codorus cam for the first time! Now I've got the kids thinking about the football games for this weekend - Go RAVENS :) 

Since this was our CE week, we also had a BRIEF discussion about the biggest CE that happened at our country's Capitol Building this week. I stuck to the bare bones. 1) There was a peaceful protest planned at the same time as the certification of electoral votes. 2) The protest became more volatile as the building was breached and broken into which halted the process of certification. 3) The building was cleared by officials/police and eventually the process continued. This certified the Biden win. I very much wanted to avoid details as that would have been a slippery slope and told the students if they have more Qs, to come home and speak to you about it. I believe Time for Kids intends to cover this story and I'll preview it when it does happen to see if it is something kid-friendly enough for our class. TFK usually does a good job of making it understandable for us.  

Next week: 
Something might POP up for math this week...

Tuesday - WLT #9
Thursday - Religion Ch 9 Test
Friday - Spelling 13
             Verbs Quiz 4.1-4.5

If you wouldn't mind, I have some plans that require LOTS of TP tubes. If you could start collecting them at home for me, I'd be so appreciative. You can send them in a few at a time or a bagful, but I'm looking at them on or before 1/22.

Have a wonderful weekend! God Bless You! 

Hi Parents, 

With our mid-week snowstorm, our plans had to be tweaked a bit. I didn't want to have to carry over anything into next week, but it appears we do have some "overflow". Because of this, we'll have 2 tests on Monday. 

Thank you for sending in all of the donations for our Christmas festivities next week. Remember if your child would like to participate in our small class gift exchange, send in a wrapped $1-2 gift by Wednesday. I have a few other fun games planned as well. 

Be sure to ask your child about our special outdoor administration-approved visitor this afternoon. :) 

Monday - Christmas Spelling List
                SS Egypt Test
Wednesday - December Book Report Due
Monday January 4th - December Reading Log Due

I hope everyone has a WONDERFUL and BLESSED Christmas break with your families! I think we are all in agreement that we are ready to be done with 2020 and are hopeful for a better 2021! God bless you! 

Hi Parents! 

Another week in the books! Thank you for continuing to work with our school families to keep everyone safe with masks, spacing, and sanitation. Today, we did a VennDiagram to compare March 13 and November 13 and their stark differences. We've come a long way since our school year was abruptly cut "short" and I'm proud and pleased that we have been in school in-person for 12 full weeks now! This gives new meaning to "It takes a village!" Thanksgiving is right around the corner and we certainly have much to give thanks for! I hope and pray that our school and school families continue to be safe and healthy. 

We've wrapped up a big writing sample this week with our compare and contrast essays. Next week, our Saints projects will be due and students will share them with the class. They are looking good! Side note - I gave an oral reminder to the class that when citing their sources "Google" isn't a valid response. Google is a search engine, not a valid website to harvest facts from. Wikipedia is also off limits, but I think we kept that in check pretty well. Please keep an eye out for these. With the dates below, we wrap up our first trimester.

We've started to dive into our study of Egypt. Next week, we'll take a closer look at Hieroglyphs. Our in-class art project is a sarcophagus. Students are loving it! We are still keeping an eye on the electoral map, but it seems changes/potential changes are slow.     

We learned about Veteran's Day, it's origins, and how people celebrate it today. We made cards for Vets and perhaps you've seen one of these come home. Please extend our heartfelt thanks to those in your family who have selflessly served our country. We are in your debt. 

We went to Mass on Wednesday to celebrate the liturgy of the Eucharist. We stayed for a short "field trip" to get a closer look at the vessels and vestments that are used in church. 

Next week:
Monday - Bring in updated Bk It Calendar for our mid-month check-up
Tuesday - Division Math Quiz
Wednesday - SS CE due
                      Saint Project due
Thursday - Spanish HW due
Friday - Art HW due
             Spelling Lesson 10 Test
             Rdg - WLT #6

Have a great weekend! 

God Bless You! 

Hi Parents, 

​The excitement was running high this week as we enjoyed our SJS Election here at school. The kids were eagerly awaiting Tuesday afternoon so we could make sure all our votes were in and ready to be counted! I posted a few pictures below of our election and the results. 

We've been checking on the Electoral Map throughout the week as well to see the results coming in from the national election. I can't believe people are still counting votes, 3 days later! But, in a way, it is interesting to show the class a perfect example of Democracy in action. We've had times while calculating the differences between the candidates that the numbers changed. This morning, the class had a strong reaction when I was looking at the class with my back to the whiteboard and they witnessed PA change from red to blue. I'm sure they may ask you to check the numbers/colors with them throughout the weekend. Who knows when counting will be done and official results are announced... 

We've been working on some writing samples in class this week as we took a break from our normal grammar lessons. Our 2 paragraph compare/contrast essay is being wrapped up early next week. We will continue to draft, edit, and work on our Saint Projects through at least the end of next week. 

We had an impromptu "Field Trip" today as the Farmer Danner was preparing to harvest his corn crop. We went out and enjoyed an informational presentation by him, which was followed by student questions. See the photos below. 

Tuesday - Rel Ch 2 Test
Wednesday - Good Copy of C/C Essay due
Thursday - Religion Act of Faith Test 
Friday - Spelling Lesson 9

I've been reminding the class that the end of Trimester 1 is coming quick. The last day for graded assignments is Thursday, November 19. Rediker is up-to-date if you haven't recently checked your child's academic grades. 

We are now in "Winter Uniforms" per the dress code. The biggest change is basically that students should wear pants for gym Thursdays and boys should wear pants with their regular uniforms on all other days. Please also help remind your child to come to school with proper outerwear for the cooler fall temperatures - sweatshirt/hoodie minimum!

Have a great weekend! It seems as though we are in for another few days of unseasonably beautiful and warm weather! 

God Bless You! 

Hi Parents! 

What a week! We just ended it with a small Halloween celebration in the classroom. We watched CoCo to learn about Day of the Dead - Senora Rupp was very pleased with this, especially since we watched the first 10 minutes in Spanish - trying to listen for familiar vocabulary. Thank you for all those who sent in sweet treats - we enjoyed a yummy afternoon! 

We also spent a good bit of time this week getting ready for the SJS Mock Election coming up on Tuesday. Today we collected registration form. Ballots and "I VOTED" stickers are being prepped to be passed out to the teachers. Our class is very excited for this. I forgot to mention this to the class today, but please tell your child patriotic headwear is allowed to be worn in the classroom on Tuesday. This could mean something red/white/blue like a headband, decorated hat, scarf, etc. I only ask we avoid showing favoritism towards a particular candidate so to avoid unnecessarily political debates. Stay tuned for the results of our SJS voting! 

Change your clocks back this weekend. Today our Journal entry was "If you could do ANYTHING with that extra hour, what would it be?" We heard lots of interesting answers such as a shopping spree, a trip to Paris, a trip to Canada, transporting SJS to the BEACH, etc. 

The SJS winter uniform starts on Monday. Please remember to mark your family name on the inside of sweatshirts/sweatpants/sweaters.

More exciting news this week: we met Father Sam Miller who recently joined our clergy here at St. Joseph! He came in to speak with each class and asked them questions as a "getting to know you" type activity. He told the students he looks forward to seeing them often, in the classroom as well as lunch and recess. That certainly made them smile! 

As we get into November this week, I've been reminding the class we are soon coming upon the end of the first trimester in 3 more weeks. Anticipate 1-2 more quiz/test grades in each subject and maybe a few graded CW assignments.

Have a wonderful weekend and enjoy that extra hour! 

God Bless You!