November 30th - December 4th

Upcoming Events

Wednesday, December 9th ~ Middle School Preview, 8am in the St. Paul's library (see more information below)**

Tuesday, December 15th ~ Fifth Grade Field Trip to see A Christmas Carol at KC Rep 

Thursday, December 17th ~ Presidents' Unit Kick-Off

Friday, December 18th ~ Eucharist Chapel, 3rd-5th Ice Skating Field Trip, Class Parties at 2:30

Monday, December 21st - Monday, January 4th ~ No School, Christmas Vacation.  Classes for students resumes on Tuesday, January 5th

*Weather Note: As the temperatures continue to drop, we wanted to send a reminder that we will continue to go outside for recess if at all possible. We think it is important that students have the time outdoors for fresh air and exercise, so please help remind your students to bring appropriate winter clothes with them to school so they are able to stay warm and enjoy their time outside. 

** Please Join Andrew Myler, Ted van Thullenar, Jill McGee and Middle School Faculty for a Middle School Preview on Wednesday, December 9th at 8:00 am in the St. Paul’s Library!

8:00 am: Coffee

8:20 am: Experience Middle School Chapel, led by our Middle School students

8:40 am: Brief discussion of Middle School at St. Paul’s and Panel discussion by recent St. Paul’s graduates

9:00 am: Observation in classrooms

* Learn about St. Paul’s Middle School and the transition from 5th to 6th grade

* Gain insight into the transition from St. Paul’s middle school to high school

* Understand our approach to the middle school years, including leadership opportunities, service-learning projects, electives and our membership in a Hybrid Learning Consortium

* Be the first to hear about soon-to-be revealed additional trips for middle school students (in addition to the traditional 8th grade trip to the YMCA Camp of the Ozarks)

Please RSVP to Jill McGee at Jmcgee@speds.org

Academics

In language arts this week, we finished our grammar unit on nouns and took our Nouns Test on Thursday.  We also resumed Wordly Wise with lesson 8.  Next week, students will complete Wordly Wise lesson 9.  Students will also begin drafting their business letters next week, and we will send them off the following week!

In reading,  Miss O'Connor's class finished Running Out of Time.  We began minilessons on our 5th grade reading strategies.  Students are applying what they learn by completing individual "task cards".  Students will then put all of their completed task cards together to create a Reading Strategies Book.  Mrs. Nash's class continued reading The Watson's Go To Birmingham.   As we read, we focused primarily on summarizing and visualizing. We are also continuing to examine character development throughout the novel. Next week, we will finish the book and take a comprehension test. 

In social studies, students began an in-class group project for our unit about the thirteen original English colonies in North America. Students are working with their groups to develop an advertisement to promote their assigned region of colonies: the New England, Middle, or Southern colonies. We will continue with this project through the end of next week.

In science this week, we transitioned from our unit on classification to plants.  We took an in depth look at photosynthesis with songs, anchor charts, and foldables for our interactive science notebooks.  Next week, we will do an investigation to discover the importance of chlorophyll, as well as learn the specific jobs of the roots, stems, and leaves in a plant.  We will conclude this mini-unit with a Plant Quiz on Wednesday, December 16th.