Curriculum Notes

Religion: Our test on the sacraments of service (chapter 18) will be on Thursday.

Also on Thursday, fifth graders will take the Assessment of Catechesis for Religious Education, a standardized test designed to assess the cumulative religious education of fifth grade students. This test was developed by the National Catholic Education Association. St. Brendan is piloting the test this year to determine the strength of our overall religious education program and its alignment with NCEA standards. Results should be back before the end of the school year.

Family Life: The human reproduction lesson will be on Tuesday. Boys will discuss the material with Mr. Evans and Mr. Fairbank. Girls will discuss the material with Mrs. Schwartz and me. Both groups will be presented the same information. The booklets will be sent home via the Wednesday envelope next week for you to read and follow up on with your child.

Also this week, we will discuss chapter six from the student book, “New Life.” The vocabulary for this lesson includes the terms procreation, euthanasia, abortion, assisted suicide, and capital punishment. The book will come home for your discussion of the family pages on Wednesday.

Science: This week we will be concluding our study of recycling by addressing environmental impacts recycling can have, specifically as it relates to birds. This will introduce our next unit of study: Raptors.

Math: We are continuing our study of multiplication and division of fractions this week. Students are working on changing mixed numbers into improper fractions for the purposes of multiplying. Later in the week, they will work with story problems dealing with standard units of measurement and to choose the correct operation to solve.

Social Studies: We will begin discussing chapter 12, “The Way West.” This week our focus will be on the first lesson – the Industrial Revolution.

Literature: Our new literature unit is titled Going West, and corresponds to our social studies chapter. This week we are reading “The Journal of Wong Ming-Chung,” a story about Chinese immigrants during the Gold Rush.

Language Arts: This week we are taking a look at free verse poetry. By the end of the week, students should have taken one poem through the entire writing process (pre-write, draft, revise, edit, and publish).

Important Dates:

5/20 – Family Life Human Reproduction Lesson

5/21 – Family Life Lesson “New Life”

5/22 – Religion Chapter 18 Test

5/22 – ACRE Standardized Test

5/23 – Daily Mass

5/23 – School Carnival – Non-Uniform Day! No Regular Hot Lunch Food Available at Carnival

5/26 – No School – Memorial Day!

5/28 – Matthew House Presentation

5/29 – Father Jim Visits Classrooms