WMA in the Classroom First and Second Trimester Highlights

ECC Highlights Johnny Appleseed Celebration

Halloween Parade and Party

Christmas Concert and Treats with Parents

New Year’s PJ Bash

Valentine’s Day Party

My Heart Belongs to Jesus (Valentine’s Day)

Winter with Snow Flake Bentley

Wild Weather Soup Centers

George Washington Carver (Scientist and Inventor)

Mae Jamison ( First African American Astronaut )

Early Childhood Class...

Getting a Good Start

The Montessori all-day students baked pumpkin bread in preparation for the Thanksgiving holiday.

The pilgrims and Indians shared a Thanksgiving Feast in the classroom. They had a wonderful Christ-

mas Show, too.

Also, all dayers have been preparing vegetables to make salads for St. Columba’s Shelter for men in

Philadelphia.

Montessori...

Discovering their World

Pre-K...

Having a Ball

Pre-K Highlights Highland Orchards in West Chester—apple picking, building a

scarecrow, running through a hay maze, making apple cider

from an apple press, and eating delicious apple cider donuts!

The Lower Merion Conservancy in Gladwyne—learning about

the different types of trees and leaves

Irvine Auditorium at the University of Pennsylvania—each

child had a favorite scene or character from “Peter Pan.”

Enjoyed having their grandparents come to school for a

Thanksgiving Prayer Service which was held in the Cafeteria.

Love having a fourth grade Big Buddies! They get together

once a month and have fun.

Decorated Johnny Appleseed Hats and Big Buddy read a story

to a Little Buddy

Decorated a small pumpkin

Strung beads to make Native American Indian necklaces

Big Buddies read a favorite Christmas story to their Little Bud-

dies and helped them make reindeer hats.

Student Appreciation Day—The Olympics!

Dr. Seuss Birthday Celebration

Kindergarten...

Making its Mark

Kindergarten Highlights

Blessing of the classrooms in September

Making “Who Will Tell the Story?” Halloween cos-

tumes with eighth grade Big Buddies and trick-or-

treating at McAuley Convent

Sibling Day on November 13

November voting booth

Thanksgiving Prayer Service and Breakfast

Christmas Craft Day

Dozens Day on December 12

Annual Christmas Program

American Heroes—Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks,

Frederick Douglass, Underground Railroad

February Prayer Service and Olympic Medals

Learning about Peru

Dozens Day

100 Day

Grade One...

Giving Back

Grade One Highlights

Field trip to Colonial Plantation: making candles and

learning about colonial life in the 1800s.

Working hard on their 90 acts of Mercy in the class-

room and on the playground

Learning all about sentences—capitalization, punctua-

tion, and naming part and action part.

Created stories for Halloween, Thanksgiving and

Christmas

Visiting Saunders House and spending quality time

playing games with the residents

Busy December—gingerbread house making, visits

from St. Nicholas, and Santa with a Snack, hearing an

old time favorite story—The Polar Express with Mr.

Stritch, book/card exchange in the classrooms, and

lots of excitement!

Grade Two... Growing by Leaps and Bounds

Grade Two Highlights Received the Sacrament of Reconciliation

Created QR codes on Main Idea

Explored Geometry by making shapes out of marshmallows

and toothpicks

The Polar Express Day –connected literature with creating

candy trains, drinking hot cocoa, and watching the movie.

Field Trip to the Camden Aquarium and learning about

“Animals and their Habitats”

Loving working with our classroom iPads

Implementing Journey’s Reading Series into the classroom

Working with and having fun with the residents of Saunders

House

Created crafts and reading books with Big Buddies for Hallow-

een, Thanksgiving and Christmas

Enjoying the new classroom furniture which creates a more

cohesive learning environment

Skyped with students in Nicaragua and Canada

Persuasive blogs asking Mrs. Stetser for a week without

uniforms...it worked!

Famous People Biographies

Grade Three... Exploring the World

Grade Three Highlights

Johnny Appleseed Day—made apple butter. Took turns slicing and dicing the apples, added a dash of cinnamon and let the crock pot do most of the work.

Read some great stories about the life of Johnny Appleseed and worked on some fun crafts. Be-fore they knew it, the sweet aromas spread throughout the classroom (and down the hall-way), and third graders were ready to taste some yummy apple butter!

Made their musical instruments out of house-hold products as one of its STEM projects!

The entire third grade rocked its performance at the Christmas Concert! They looked so cute in their festive green and red (mostly red) attire.

Baked Thanksgiving pumpkin bread with their parents

Completed Pennsylvania biography research on

famous Pennsylvanians

Christmas Around the World

Native American Habitats

Grade Four... Second Floor, Here they Come!

Grade Four Highlights Made a wind turbine that beat the model from the kit

Made seasonal projects with pre-k Little Buddies

Collected toiletries for Bethesda Project

Field trip to Solebury Farms

Religion

Studied Creation

Created Diamante Poems

Studied Old Testament figures – Prehistory through the Patriarchs.

Studied Catherine McAuley, St. Francis of Assisi, Rachel Carson and Chief Seattle

Studied the Liturgical Calendar and colors

Created Advent calendars

Studied the Advent Wreath, Jesse Tree, O Antiphons and other Advent symbols.

Read and studied the Sunday gospels in Venture magazine

Math

Mastering addition, subtraction, multiplication and division

Working on their stock project – students “bought” $10,000 worth of stock and

are tracking it using Excel and Yahoo Finance. It lasts all year long!

Language Arts

Reading Genres: Historical Fiction, Mysteries, Fairy Tales, Fantasy, Realistic Fic-

tion, Biography, Non-Fiction

Skills and Strategies: Previewing Text; Making Inferences; Making Connections;

Comparing and Contrasting; Classifying and Categorizing; Identifying Cause and

Effect; Questioning, Visualizing, Using Context to Build Comprehension (physical

setting, historical time period); Summarizing, Responding to Text; Evaluating Text;

Character Analysis; Elements of a Novel or Short Story; Determining Author’s Pur-

pose; Exploring Diverse Perspectives (author, characters, readers)

Novels Read: The Secret School, Stone Fox, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,

Snow Treasure

Writing Projects: Descriptive Paragraph; Beginning-Middle-End Mystery; Persua-

sive Letter; Opinion Essay; New Year’s Resolution Paragraph (refresher on para-

graph structure following winter break); Writing a Story Sequel

Writing Skills: Narrowing Ideas and Creating an Objective; Brainstorming Ideas

and Details (providing examples to strengthen ideas); Strong Word Choice; Organ-

izing and Planning; Sentence Fluency and Paragraph Structure (clarity, cohesive-

ness, flow, etc.); Effective Transitions; Revising and Editing; Providing Constructive

Criticism during Peer Conferences; Conventions (spelling, punctuation, capitaliza-

tion, grammar); Publishing; Presenting Written Work to an Audience

Grammar: The Sentence (subjects and predicates), Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives

Grade Five... Learning about Themselves

Grade Five Highlights Visits to Catholic Worker Clinic in groups of four to assist

the clients in writing Christmas and holiday cards

A parent of a fifth grade student spoke to the students

about careers.

Visited the Sisters at McAuley Convent to sing at Christ-

mas

Field trip to Palmyra Cove Nature Park

Baked pumpkin bread for Thanksgiving

Learned about Confirmation and how to prepare for re-

ceiving this sacrament

Learned about saints and how they model what it means

to be Mercy

Created SCRATCH programs about the saints. Each stu-

dent created a storyboard based on an act of mercy or

pivotal moment in the life of a saint from a book he or

she read.

Completed a research project on Canada, creating giant

postcards about the territory or province they studied in

Social Studies

Learning a lot about fractions and mixed number as well

as how to add, subtract, multiply and divide them. They

will be moving on to decimals very soon.

Wrote a personal narrative on an important moment in their lives, and took several Weekly Skills Tests that focus on grammar and vocabulary building.

Read the novels Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick and Eggs by Jerry Spinelli. After reading a class novel, students engage in Socratic Seminars to discuss major themes and concepts in the novel including: friendship, loss, forgiveness, and family. Students wrote a five-paragraph literary essay on both novels on a topic of the class’ choosing.

Grade Six... Piloting New Programs

Grade Six Highlights Team-Building Day in the fall

Learning programming by creating animations in Scratch, an online commu-nity and programming language

Celebrated Halloween and Christmas with their Little Buddies

Went to see the Pompeii exhibit at the Franklin Institute which integrated the social studies and science curriculum. They also saw a CBS 3 Weather Show. Students also went to the planetarium and saw a film on how every-day man’s daily technology originated from technology founded for use in space exploration.

Language Arts

Piloting Chromebooks and using them for vocabulary review on quizlet, tak-ing quizzes, completing discussion boards, submitting projects, and com-piling/sharing information in our online classroom (Edmodo)

Read independent novels that students chose from the library and wrote a proposal to have the book be made into a movie. They also created a trailer for their future movie.

They read the book, Bridge to Terabithia, which was the source of a lot of great discussions, a Socratic seminar (graded, student-led discussion) and philosophical chairs.

Students wrote an informative research paper on the topic of their choice; many students chose an Olympic topic and those students created a group presentation for Community Gathering.

My brother, who just returned from serving overseas as a Navy Seal, came in to visit the 6th grade before he left (In October). We learned all about what it's like to be a Navy Seal and students got to ask questions about his job. Students practiced letter writing while he was away (we sent him deco-rations and cards for Christmas and a special letter via e-mail for Thanksgiv-ing).

Math

Learning about fractions and integers and how to add, subtract, multiply and divide them. After mastering decimals, they will be moving on to ratios, percent and proportions

Learned about prime factorization and factor trees and how to find the GCF and LCM using factors trees.

Spent time solving equations using the inverse operation to isolate the vari-able.

Social Studies

Currently studying Ancient Greece and Rome

Previously studied governments, culture, and the effects of geography for the early civilizations of the Fertile Crescent, and the empires of Middle East, India and China

Religion

Compared Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism

Studying the Covenant made with Abraham and its continuation through Jacob, Isaac, Moses and Joshua and the leaders described in the Book of Judges

Learned about The Exodus and The Exile

Grade Seven... Almost There

Grade Seven Highlights Science

Writing a formal lab report using a rubric

Labs including Designing an experiment to test an Earthworms Response to a Stim-ulus; a Dichotomous Key to classify organisms; Denaturation of Proteins; and the Plant Cell/Onion Tissue

Created an advertising campaign for National Nutrition Week to help teenagers eat a healthy diet using technology

Using a digital online scrapbook to compare a plant or animal cell to a building

Language Arts

Read Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, and Skyping with the book’s author, Jordan Sonnenblickm and wrote a character analysis essay on the main character of the story

Studied S.E. Hinton’s young adult classic novel, The Outsiders and dressed as Greasers and performed skits, which allowed them to display their understanding of various literary elements present in the novel

Social Studies

Learned about the history of our country’s early years

Learned about our Constitution

Prepared for future forensic tournaments

Participating in the 20/20 Challenge, which is trying to solve 20 global problems in 20 years. This year's topic is poverty. Students are working with two other schools, the Baldwin School and the International School in Japan. Great critical thinking skills are involved.

Studying the Era of the Roaring Twenties

Religion

Interviews on vocations

Drew a picture of Saint Andrew Taegon

The Our Father rewritten in students’ own words and then put into Tagxedo

Celebrated the feast of St. Francis of Assisi with pet photos and a prayer service

The Maryknoll Essay Contest

Created Memorial Cards to commemorate those who have passed on.

Created a three-minute online retreat using Prezi

Painted the chairs that were distributed to each homeroom as part of our theme

Created postage stamps to depict the dignity of man (God’s creation)

“As a shepherd protects his sheep, who protects us in life?” assignment on Ed-modo

Created a Tzedakah (Charity Box) to collect money for those in the Phillipines

Gospel Reenactments

“Simon Birch” and learned how to write a paper based on a media presentation (Catholic-scripture based)

Yearlong Catholic Genius Contest run on Socrative (Cherubims vs. Magisteriums)

Grade Eight... Preparing for the Future

Grade Eight Highlights Science

Writing formal lab reports using a rubric

Labs, including Measurement; Mass Volume and Indirect Measurement; Speed; New-ton’s Three Laws; Energy in a System and Conservation of Energy

Project on safety design features used by auto manufacturers and presented it to the class using technology

Social Studies

Visit to the National Constitution and met Congressman John Lewis. They also received an autograph copy of his book. The class had researched the life of John Lewis before their meeting.

Learned about the events of 1974 to 2013. This knowledge should help them to better understand what is going on in our world today.

Learned about the Progressive Movement. Each eighth grader researched a topic that interested them, wrote a persuasive speech and then delivered it to their classmates.

Preparing for forensic tournaments

World Affairs Council Model UN program

Religion

Participated in the Catholic Genius Contest (Socrative)

Viewed Oscar Romero movie and wrote a critical-thinking paper on it as a follow-up to a Catholic social justice lesson on Oscar Romero

All Souls Day field trip to East Laurel Hill Cemetery

Marian apparition group projects using Prezi

Gospel Reenactments

Saint Francis of Assisi prayer service

Students love the new assessments and texts in religion. No tests!

English

Research papers about a topic of their choice. They spent many weeks brainstorming, researching, taking notes, writing and rewriting.

Group project, where they connected current events to their textbook, And Justice for All

Writing their own Christmas stories for their Kindergarten buddies

Began To Kill a Mockingbird. They will be reading the story, discussing it, and doing writing assignments.

Created collages about themselves. This connected to To Kill a Mockingbird because one of the main characters is coming of age. Eighth grade is a time to get to know yourself before you enter high school.

Learning about transitive and intransitive verbs.

Math

Research project, titled “The Green Car,” in which students gathered information about the amount of barrels of petroleum, air pollution rating and evaluated the levels of greenhouse gases. They collected the data, graphed it and evaluated the infor-mation in a formal report.

Highlights from Highlights from WMAWMA

Mercy Day MassMercy Day Mass

Christmas ConcertChristmas Concert

HomecomingHomecoming

Olweus Olweus

MeetingsMeetings

Giving TreeGiving Tree

Carol NightCarol Night

String Ensemble at String Ensemble at

McAuley ConventMcAuley Convent

Chinese New YearChinese New Year Student Appreciation Day Student Appreciation Day

OlympicsOlympics

Winter CarnivalWinter Carnival