Mr. Cahill

THANK YOU!!!

A number of "Thank You's" are due! First of all, thanks to all of those parents who helped make sure that our Native American day was a smashing success. Your help setting up the Xavier Room was invaluable. Students worked incredibly hard on their dioramas, artifacts, and reports. Their effort shined through. I don't think Native American villages have looked so good since before Columbus showed up and ruined everything. (We will be covering Columbus' various voyages this week).

Our class has had a tremendous offering of help for field trip chaperones - both for the trip to the Mitchell Museum as well as the upcoming venture to the CSO. Please know we appreciate your help even if we cannot accommodate every parent as a chaperone on every trip. Ms. Howard and I generally do random drawings to insure fairness.

Additionally - Thanks to those who brought in food to keep the faculty fed this past Thursday. The spread was enormous and delicious. I received a number of wonderful compliments from other faculty members. I assured them that I was not responsible but rather the parents of my wonderful students. 

Thanks again to all - and especially my room parents who have done a masterful job of coordinating these activities.

As the first quarter comes to a close, please ensure that your scholarly children are taking time out of their busy schedules to do some independent reading at home. Their aim should be a bare minimum of twenty minutes per evening. 

Beginning last week, students in both 5th grade classes have been participating in an island survival simulation which imitates the situation that Karana, the heroine of "Island of the Blue Dolphin" finds herself in as Scott O'Dell's novel of survival progresses. Each round of the simulation, groups of student must choose a specific survival strategy to implement which will result in an increase in any of a number of necessary resources (food, shelter, etc.). They journal about their decisions each round and are thus compiling a parallel log of survival to the novel itself. As readers, we have been spending a great deal of time focusing on different points of view in the novel and how identical pieces of information are presented in a variety of ways. 

In religion, students have been wrapping up reports on assigned saints who celebrate their feast days during the month of October. Leading up to All Saints (and Souls) Day next week, students will begin to work on an "Icon" of a family member - living or dead. This is to help students recognize that saints are not merely those individuals canonized by the Church - but also everyday people who go about their lives with a spirit of charity to those around them. I'm looking forward to compiling our very own book of saints!

Thanks to all parents for coming out to school last Thursday night for back to school night. It was great to speak and dine with you in an informal setting. 

The end of September and October are shaping up to be exciting months in fifth grade. 

Today, I distributed Native American project packs and each student selected a tribe through an NFL draft style selection process. Students will be researching a specific Native American tribe and composing a report detailing their way of life, customs, resources, religious ceremonies, etc. Time and instruction will be given in Language Arts to aid and guide the writing of these reports. Each pupil will also be creating a visual display of the daily life in the tribe, constructing models of their dwellings and including some artifacts that the tribe might have used. One of these will be hand made. Final drafts of the report will be due on October 11, and the following day, Friday October 12, each student will display their visual presentation in the Xavier Room beginning a 2 PM. You are welcome to come view the exhibits and support all of the students and their hard work.

Both fifth grade classes will also be taking a field trip to the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian on Wednesday October 10th. Information and permission slips for this field trip will be making their way home soon in your child's home folder.

We continue to read Scott O'Dell's "Island of the Blue Dolphins" as we examine the fictionalized life of Karana, a Native American girl who becomes stranded on an island off the coast of California after the rest of her tribe leaves the island. Karana must learn to survive independently and make life and death decisions as she combats the forces of nature, monstrous sea elephants, and a pack of rabid wild dogs.

 

First Weeks

The first few weeks have been an incredibly energetic time. It's great getting to know each of the students and preparing them to thrive in 5th grade. 

In language arts students have designed a book cover (or dust jacket) for the book that they would most want to pick up off the shelf and read. They designed a cover which incorporated their favorite kinds of literature and authors. Students have developed their own characters and settings for these stories and set about constructing a basic plot outline based on problem/solution models. After writing a "hook" to engage would be readers, students reviewed each others work on the back cover. 

Now, students have begun writing the body of these stories. Look for these to come home at times in the coming week.

The first few days in Social Studies have focused on demographics and family histories. We traced each student's ancestors from their homelands to North America on a map of the world that is now hanging outside the classroom. We have now begun discussing the very first immigrants to the United States - not Columbus and the Spaniards, but rather the ancestors of the Native Americans who crossed the Alaskan land bridge during the last Ice Age. Those students who remembered Sarah Palin's famous quote "I can see Russia from my house" learned that, had she lived tens of thousands of years ago, Sarah could in fact have walked to Russia from her house. 

We have just finished a story focusing on Matthew Henson and the 1908-1909 Peary Expedition to the North Pole. These are merely more modern pioneers of the same mysterious land of the Arctic. 

Mr. McKenna announced today that St. Francis Xavier School has been awarded a blue ribbon by the U.S. Department of Education. This is a great honor for which both you and your students are largely responsible. 

Well done.

Mr. Cahill

Welcome Back!

Welcome back to St. Francis Xavier for the 2012-2013 school year! I'm Mr Cahill and I am the new fifth grade teacher. Thanks to those of you who came by to meet me and drop off materials on Thursday afternoon. For those of you who did not have an opportunity to come by, please know that if you ordered an"Edukit," the majority of your supplies are waiting for you in the classroom. 

Parents, beginning the first week of school, please be on the look out for a take home folder, labeled with your child's name. This folder will contain important information about classroom management and expectations. We'll be defining a set of classroom rules and procedures during the first days of school, and it is important that parents are informed of what is expected of their children. Along with the student assignment notebooks, and emails when necessary, the take home folder will be a primary means of communication between home and school.

If you have any questions or concerns, please email me at jamescahill@sfx-school.org

Thanks again and welcome!

Mr. Cahill