Fifth Grade Homeroom has begun Unit 5: God Hears and Answers His People: The Lord’s Prayer. They are learning what it means to follow Jesus and how He is manifest in their lives. They will learn what discipleship is, and in what ways they can be a disciple now and in the future. They are memorizing the 5th Petition of the Lord’s Prayer this month.
In grades 5-8 Language Arts, the students completed a Verb study and will begin a unit on adjectives and modifiers. In Writing, students will expand their opinions into persuasive writings. Students are beginning a novel study within a small group. At this stage, they are evaluating the exposition, the author’s introduction of characters, setting, and the problem. We will relate this to their narrative writings. The students have been preparing for the Iowa Assessments coming up in February, with their continual study of academic vocabulary and reading passages.
Critical Thinking: With the amount of thinking we do on a daily basis it is hard to pick just one critical thinking activity to tell you about. But, we will let you in on a little secret, we love using technology in science. 6th graders just finished up making interactive element posters that when you touch a certain part of the poster it actually talks to you! Cool right?! Using “makey-makeys”, our chromebooks, and some coding there is so much we can do! 7th and 8th graders have been working with micro:bits. A micro:bit is basically a pocket- sized computer with an LED light display, buttons, sensors and many input/output features that, when programmed, let us interact with a variety of things. Our goal is to connect it to what’s called a hummingbird. We will program the micro:bit to make the hummingbird create a drummer boy. Literally an object making a beat on another object. We will keep you posted at how our critical thinking skills grow through this experience.
#da-dum-da-dum
Collaboration: As part of our recent Lutheran Schools week celebration, we took part in a “Goosechase” scavenger hunt with other Lutheran schools in Iowa; Spencer, Ft. Dodge and Latimer. We usually compete against them in sports, so having another type of competition with our whole school was a lot of fun. Our competition was all done through the Goosechase app, technology makes us seem so close together yet we’re miles and miles away. Our missions included singing, climbing, counting, and of course laughing. Hopefully this becomes an annual tradition. #WePlacedThird
Communication: Communicate, communicate, communicate, Have you ever really thought about how much of our time is spent communicating with others? We communicate in our actions, in our words, in our writing, in our artwork, in person, through text, through video… Communication never stops. One of the things we have really enjoyed doing is the pen-pal project. Each of us has been partnered up with someone in the community to be a pen pal with. Some of us were even lucky enough to get our grandparent as a pen pal! We love reading our letters and having this opportunity to write back and forth with them has been great practice for our communication skills. #WriteBackSoon
Creativity: If only it was allowed to just have art class all day, we would be so excited! It seems like there’s never enough time to capture all that our creative juices are pouring out. One idea always leads to another and another and sometimes even another! We recently created some really cool watercolor with salt pieces. Each one is an abstract representation of a Bible verse that speaks to us. Using a variety of circles, we spelled out words that are key to these verses. Our next project will include a study of surrealist artist Rene Magritte, who became well known for creating witty and thought-provoking images, by putting ordinary objects in unusual places. #MoreArtTimePlease
Christ: “In all things” was the recent theme of our NLSW celebration and we can totally see why this Bible verse (Colossians 1:17-20) was used as the focus of our celebration. During our school day, during our school week, during our school year, Christ is in all things. Beginning our day with God’s word, ending our day with prayer and being sprinkled in throughout the day is the message of God and our salvation. Christ is the focus of Trinity and as an added bonus, we also get to learn all the other things, like how to divide fractions, graph linear equations, code a micro:bit, communicate, think critically and stretch our imagination. #WeLoveOurSchool